


Silhouettes of Gold

by inkedinserendipity



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Drama, F/F, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Slow Build, bromance ships are everywhere, copious amounts of tears and feels, dunkle sans - Freeform, lots of background characters, really slow build wow, romance ships are canon, some making important cameos, things will get much worse before they get better
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-27
Updated: 2016-09-23
Packaged: 2018-06-04 02:46:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 14
Words: 58,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6638242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkedinserendipity/pseuds/inkedinserendipity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>See, there's something strange about Souls - they can be split. Torn apart, shattered, absorbed, leeched, whatever. Split into two. </p><p>Of course, the splitting of a Soul is unheard-of, but then again, Frisk isn't exactly normal. (Neither is Chara.)  </p><p>Chara grows impatient with Frisk's pacifistic tendencies, and decides they've lived as a disembodied ghost for far too long. In the end, it is easy - laughably so - to tear Frisk from their family. Happy ending? </p><p>Ha.</p><p>(EDIT: Underwent major renovations as of 8/6/16, in order to cut down on exposition time - first two chapters moved to Yellowed Frames, new first chapter edited slightly.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone! I'm very excited to share this with you. :) This fic was originally intended to be a nice 50k National Novel Writing Month effort that ended up being much, much longer. 
> 
> Warnings for angst, abuse mentions, and as always, scandalous amounts of bromance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which Frisk is cold, Toriel is warm, and Sans is an old sap. Also, there are nightmares.

Asgore knew it'd be hard, being King of a revived species. That bringing an impatient race of monsters aboveground, with little warning to the humans surface-ward, would cause...problems. To spread a message of goodwill instantly was absolutely vital. To the media, he thought, hoping against hope that he would talk, and the humans would listen.

Easier said than done. Humans are notoriously stubborn and prejudiced. Enough that he has to wonder how they survive, as a race, with so much judgment. He plans his words during their first contact with painstaking care, penned by himself and edited scrutinously by Toriel.

Despite their efforts, the beginning of the meeting goes...badly. He understands, now, the human comparison between journalists and vultures. But with Asgore's diplomacy, Frisk's sincerity and Papyrus's honest enthusiasm, monsterkind muddles through their first contact with humans. 

Asgore is only glad that he and his people were given the chance to speak and be heard, and - if he interprets the _flood_ of electronic outpouring correctly (with more than a bit of help from Alphys) - war is averted. Though it will take time for humankind to adjust to their presence, at least, Asgore can allow himself to hope, there may be peace. 

He, Toriel, Frisk and Papyrus leave - not _happy_ , but satisfied. This is a new beginning. 

 

When the four of them return from the interview, Sans is waiting outside Toriel’s house with three mugs of coffee - one in one hand, one on his shoulder and the other balanced on his skull. He hands Asgore a cup, lends Papyrus a shoulder, then proffers the last cup to Toriel with a bow. 

“This smells delicious,” says Asgore graciously, sipping delicately. It’s store brand, brewed in an automatic coffee maker that Sans found in Asgore’s own home, Sans doesn’t say. He’s sure Asgore knew that anyway.

“Glad to hear, your Majesty sir,” Sans winks his left eye at him. “Figured you’d want something warm after all that frosty air in there. How’d it go?”

Papyrus bounces excitedly in the snow, sending drops of his coffee sizzling on the ground. “It went very well, brother! I inspired the humans with a resounding speech! Some of them cried. I was worried, because normally humans cry when they are sad, but Frisk told me that humans also cry when they are really happy, so I think they were overjoyed! Humans are weird.”

“That they are,” Sans agrees. He sticks both hands in his pockets and shrugs, winking at Papyrus. “Welp, just wanted to make sure y’all got home safe. Night, your Majesty, and ‘night, your Previous Majesty. See you both later.”

He gives a short, grinning bow before trudging back toward his house. Papyrus watches him slink away for a moment, drawing shadows around him as he walks, before leaping to attention and following suit. “Good night, your Majesty! Good night, Miss Toriel!” 

Papyrus, too, turns and bounds away. He catches up to Sans easily, and from where Toriel stands she can hear his distinct voice excitedly recounting his exact speech, word-for-word. Impressive memory.

Asgore pauses and looks at her, but her mouth tightens and she does not meet his eyes. Instead, she readjusts her arms around Frisk, cuddling the child closer to her chest. With a tiny, defeated sigh, he turns and trudges home. 

Toriel watches him go, then returns her full attention to her child. “Well done, young one,” she whispers to a sleeping Frisk, and nuzzles her nose in Frisk’s hair. She bows herself against the snow, blocking her child from the bitter cold. Even in their sleep, Frisk smiles and curls closer around Toriel’s chest. 

Then, a thought occurs to her. “Sans?” she calls after the skeleton, catching him right before his door. 

He turns to squint at her through the snowy air. “Yeah, Tori?”

Papyrus looks between her and his brother (who’s just standing there, looking at her - apparently for Sans, trips through heavy snow are one-way only) then back to her again, then picks up his brother easily in both arms. With a smug “Nyeh heh heh!” he hurls a flailing Sans bodily toward the snow piling around Toriel’s knees. 

Sans lands ungracefully on a snowdrift near her. He pulls himself indignantly to his feet, rubbing his coccyx, and turns to yell at Papyrus. But before Sans can utter a word, his brother turns and cackles all the way into his house.

Toriel smothers a snort behind her mug. His sore expression only makes her laugh harder. He mock-glares at her while he waits for her mirth to subside, then lets his expression soften. She clears her throat, still grinning. 

“I heard you talking to Frisk in the car ride. I only wanted to say thank you.” 

“No problem, Tori. Happy to help.”

She grins mischievously. “I almost expected you to say that it was nothing remarkable to report.”

“Eh, well, flyin’ through the snow can be a pen in the butt. Just knocks the puns right outta ya.” 

Around them, drifting snow muffles the sound of faraway cars and calling pedestrians. Above their heads, streetlight pools their feet in warm light. They pause for a moment, their breaths crystallizing together in the air. Toriel’s curling grin melts gently into a small smile. They stay that way for a moment, until Frisk’s shivering captures both of their attentions. 

Toriel winces sympathetically. “I should go inside. Frisk hasn’t been sleeping well since we exited the Underground, and I think more sleep would be best for them,” she frets, wrapping her arms more securely around Frisk’s form. Any tighter, Sans thinks idly, and Toriel will squish their ribcage. 

“Haven’t been sleeping well, huh?” he asks. 

“No. I am concerned. They slept quite well toward the beginning, but for the past several weeks...” 

“How bad?” 

“They have trouble resting,” she admits, absently running a claw through Frisk’s hair. 

Sans grabs his own sleeves, deep in thought. Then he shrugs and mutters “Welp, guess I’m an old sap now,” and pulls off his jacket. “Here, I got somethin’ for the kid.” 

With an unusual gentleness, he tucks it around their entire body. The coat practically swallows them. Sans pulls the hood right up to their neck. Frisk is so tiny. 

At least now they’ve stopped shivering. Toriel looks at him, eyes warm and soft. “Thank you, Sans.” 

He grins easily at her. “Anything for the kid. ‘sides, I’ve got spares.”

He’s surprised to find that those words ring oddly true. Welp. He’s degenerated from sap to Log Cabin maple syrup at this point. “‘Night, Tori.” 

He takes a few steps, crunching through the snow, letting the snowflakes bounce harmlessly off his frozen jawbone. He has every intention of popping through his door and falling asleep, but there’s something else he needs to do. 

Sans bows his head and stops. Plants himself in the snow. Buries his hands in his jacket pockets. He turns his face from Toriel’s view to mask the sickly yellow flickering his eyes, and without turning around, calls, “Hey, Tori?”

Toriel, who had nearly reached the front door of her house, turns to face him curiously. His outline is stark and dark against the white snow. “Yes, Sans?”

“Call me if the kid has another nightmare, yeah?” 

Toriel looks confused. But she nods. “Very well,” and with a gentle click shuts the door behind her. 

 

Sans doesn’t sleep well that night. He tucks Papyrus into his racecar bed, retrieved straight from the Underground, and reads Pap a well-loved bedtime story. Sans can’t quite keep from yawning himself, his tiredness stuttering through his words like hiccups, but Papyrus doesn’t mind. Pap pulls the covers up over his own nose so that only his eyes are visible beneath the violently red, flame-patterned blanket. His eyes stay open right until the last word. Then he falls back on his cranium, heh, in-sans-ate.

Sans takes a second to pull the covers down a bit so that Papyrus can breathe, yawns, then sets the book haphazardly on Papyrus’s bookshelf. He has no doubt that Papyrus will wake up in the morning and put the book back...wherever it’s supposed to go. Sans regards the bookshelf for a moment, but nope - his brother has monster and human books tangled together on each of his three shelves, with bright orange binding right next to dark blue, and the titles bounce from every end of the alphabet as Sans skims them. 

He shrugs. His brother’s system of organization is not a mystery he has to work out right now, and besides, he can always ask Papyrus when he’s awake. Sans bids his brother a quiet good night and flicks off the lights. 

As soon as he shuts the door behind himself, his skull aches. The sound of the door repeats over and over again, a staccato rhythm that jars against his brain. He resists the urge to slump against the wall. Cursing his own brain, Sans gathers up his own old, old bones, and shuffles downstairs. 

He falls back onto the couch and stares at the blank television screen. It’s dark and off. The fridge is off too. So is the oven, and the heater-fridge beside it, and the rice cooker on the counter. The lights are off. Above his head, the fan blades do not rotate. Sans curls up in a corner of his sofa, and his pet rock stares at him with disappointed pink sprinkle eyes. 

Nightmares, huh. What a coincidence, he thinks bitterly, that he and the kid are having nightmares. Just when he needs someone to blame, someone to hate, he can’t fault the kid - he just knows that his kid, his Frisk, isn’t the dust-plated murderer who shuffles out of the Ruins in his dreams. Who else can he blame, then? Well. His own ineptitude sounds like a good option. Or maybe his laziness, his judgmental attitude, his lack of caring, his inability to return affection - 

He turns onto his side and closes his eyes. For hours Sans lies that way, his mind very much, very unfortunately alive. He knows the visions that will greet him in sleep. He’s already watched Undyne scald the grounds of Waterfall as she melts into nothing, dust trailing from behind Frisk’s hands and staining the door of the Ruins with gray ash, seen a jagged knife tear through Papyrus’s vertebrae and rip him to shreds. 

Or maybe he’ll watch something else. There’s a whole selection! How about the kid tormenting Alphys with the speaker system wired through the Core? How about them tailing Asgore for weeks, hissing at him from the shadows until the he breaks down? How about them run through with Undyne’s spears, or breathless as Asriel tears out their soul for the tenth time, or the best, the kid spitting blood and grinning as he drives chipped white bones up through their ribcage. 

Sans flicks the fan onto the lowest setting with the barest movement of his forefinger, just to get some movement in the room. His thoughts whirl, and he’s exhausted but utterly unable to sleep. He can only really sleep with other people around, now. He needs life, and energy, and he can’t provide that for himself. What would he do if Papyrus were to die? Die himself, maybe, he thinks, then hurriedly shoves that thought away. 

Slowly, he slips into a half-doze, watching the fan blades rotate against the dark ceiling. It’s soporific, the wings spinning in an endless cycle. Cycles fascinate him, like his hand-made tornado - though not a good brand of fascination. Funny how the blades here and the trash whirling upstairs can never quite muster the energy required to assume escape velocity and break free. Just like him, like how he could never escape the Resets, however hard he tried. 

There could still be Resets, actually. Just because everyone’s made it to the surface, just because these three months have been a sort of promised land Sans isn’t entirely sure he deserves, that doesn’t mean the kid will never Reset again. In fact, his jaded mind whispers, who’s to say they’ll ever stop? What if he’s still in that cycle? What if he wakes up tomorrow in Snowdin, staring at a different fan rotating over his head?

Sans turns his gaze instead to the windows, hating himself for that bitter thought. He’s not going to get stuck back in that bitter drain on his psyche. They’ve made it. He’s not trapped. There’s no way the kid would do that to them. 

It’s going to be fine, Sans tells himself, and flips over again.

He doesn’t believe himself. He digs his fingers into the bare, dehydrated bones of his arms. Without the padding of his jacket, one rough outer layer scrubs against another and flakes dried calcium onto the floor like dust. 

 

Several hours later, Sans’s phone wakes him from sleep. He sits upright slowly, rubbing sleep and wet off his cheeks. “Morning already?” Sans grumbles to himself, but...no, there is still only starlight streaming through the windows. He and Pap have to go stargazing at some point, he makes himself a foggy mental note. He fumbles around in his ribcage before withdrawing his phone and unlocks it with one shaking hand. 

Toriel’s name appears on his screen, her contact picture lighting the room with a harsh metallic glow. He puts the phone to his ear. “Yeah?” he says to the phone, then remembers to swipe to pick up the call. “Stupid,” he hisses at himself, and swipes. “Yeah, Tori?”

“Sans?” Toriel replies immediately. “I am very sorry to call you so late at night, but Frisk is having a nightmare and I am at a loss of how to help them, and you requested that I call you...”

Toriel’s voice is shaking, unsteady. “Hey, it’s okay,” Sans replies as comfortingly as he can. Instantly, his grins slips back on his face, like a spark of remembrance flashing across his skull. He lurches off of his sofa, jabbing at his head to stop it from shaking. His hands, trembling, search around for the house keys on the counter. Finally, his fingers latch onto a cold metal shape and he grabs it. He steps outside, sees that he grabbed the rack from the toaster, then bites down on a curse and steps back toward the counter. Finally, he picks up the right jangling metal object. 

Within a second, he’s outside Toriel’s house. “I’m coming on over, I’ll see what I can do. I’m outside now.”

Toriel makes a muffled noise of surprise, then several seconds and lots of padded footsteps later, she appears at the door, phone still held to her ear. She’s in a purple nightrobe that pools in a disarray at her feet. Her glasses are askew on her face and clouded with moisture. She looks from him, who holds up a blank phone screen, to her phone, and presses the end button. 

“Mind if I come on in?”

“Please,” she responds, and steps aside. “Thank you for coming so quickly, Sans. I was at a loss for what to do.”

“I understand, Tori. Glad you called me. Lemme see if I can help, yeah?”

Sans follows her down the hall to Frisk’s room. Toriel moves quickly, and with her long legs and urgent steps he practically runs to keep pace. She’s right, he can tell as they approach the kid’s door. They aren’t having a good time at all. He can hear little choked whimpers and gasps as Toriel slides the door open. 

His smile slips. Despite his latent memories of the kid, his heart goes out to them. They look miserable. Sweat drips down their face and they clutch at their own pillow. His jacket, spread across their shoulders and chest, is mussed and rumpled. 

“Heya, bucko,” Sans says quietly, sitting himself next to them. They don’t react to his voice, so he rubs a thumbpad across their forehead. It's hot and unpleasantly sticky with sweat. “How long have they been like this?” he asks Toriel quietly, keeping his eyes locked on the kid's expression. As he watches, their entire face jams up into an expression of sheer terror. 

“They woke me about ten minutes ago.” Toriel hovers by his side, fingers itching to minister, to help, but she holds herself back. Sans admires her composure. 

“Hmm,” he hums noncommittally. In front of him, Frisk’s expression twists from horror to anguish around a small gasp. “Did they wake up?”

“No.”

Sans sets two bony hands on Frisks’ shoulders and shakes gently. “Sleepy time’s over, kiddo, time to get up and face the day.”

They do not wake up. Sans shakes again, more insistently. “C’mon, you're worrying your mom over here. ‘s much better for you awake right now.”

Toriel joins in his platitudes with “Frisk, my child, please return to us,” and at her voice the kid finally responds. Their eyes blink open blearily. “Mom?” they call, reaching blindly for Toriel and choking out a sob-yawn. Instead, their hands clasp around Sans’s arm. 

Their fingers tense around bone, then they jolt back with a shuddering gasp, muttering “no no no no no” under their breath. Their eyes are wide and terrified, staring horror-struck at Sans before wrapping their own arms around their legs and burying their face in their knees. 

“My child, are you all right?” Toriel asks, alarmed, pressing closer to the bed from over Sans’s shoulder. Frisk curls tighter into a ball of quivering child and cries. They seem to be trying to shrink back and merge into the Delta Rune inscribed on the headboard of their bed. Sans’s brain jams between moving forward to try to help and backing away from the kid. He’s not equipped to deal with this terror. He feels trapped, and the urge to remove himself as far from the tension as possible swells. He shoves it down. The sight of the kid shaking, eyes trained on his face and wide and small, tears at him. He forces himself to move a bit forward, shoving his doubt to the back of his head. 

But Frisk screams, even more terrified, and kicks their tiny sock-clad feet in Sans’s direction. Their pathetic mantra of no no no starts again and drills against Sans’s skull. “Tori, give ‘em a hug,” he suggests quietly, drawing himself off the bed. He doesn't miss how some of the tension drains out of Frisk’s body, slipping out of them like sand out of an hourglass. 

Toriel looks at him oddly but does not comment, moving swiftly in front of Sans to pull the sobbing child into her arms. “There, there, my child. It is all right now. I am here. Do not cry, sweet child, everything will be okay...”

Slowly, slowly, Frisk releases themself from their tight huddle against their bed and relaxes into Toriel’s arms. “‘m sorry,” they mutter, trying to wipe their tears on their own rumpled sleeve.

“Do not apologize,” says Toriel. “It is quite all right. Sans, could you retrieve some tissues for us?”

Sans is gone before she finishes her sentence, glad to be out of the oppressive room. “Some help you were,” he mutters to himself, warping into Frisk’s bathroom and grabbing a roll of toilet paper. He turns to leave, but now that he’s got the paper in his hands...

Sans rests his hands on the countertop and stares at the mirror. His mouth is quirked upward in a lifeless grin. He stretches his mouth experimentally, but no matter how he twists his teeth his smile is ominous and unsettling. Probably for the better that he left the kid alone, he thinks grimly. The bags under his eyes give away his exhaustion. When is the last time he’s had a good night’s sleep? He...can’t actually remember.

Sans closes his eyes and turns away from his own reflection. It’s disgusting to look at. 

He opens the door and plods silently down the hallway toward Frisk’s room, ignoring the mirrors neatly lining the walls. Sans slips the door open and hands Toriel the roll of toilet paper wordlessly, then sits himself at the far corner of the bed. 

Frisk can’t look at him long before burying their face in Toriel’s arms. “‘m sorry,” they whisper into her shoulder. “I shouldn’t’ve kicked you.”

“I get it, kid,” he sighs. “I get it.” 

For a moment, there is nothing in the room except silence. “Would you like to talk about your nightmare? What occurred to frighten you so badly, my child?” Toriel asks Frisk quietly. 

Frisk’s eyebrows contract immediately, and they hunch back in on themself. Toriel looks like she regrets asking. Frisk’s lower lip wobbles a bit, but they manage to shake their head no. 

“Would you like for us to leave you some space?” 

Frisk pauses for a second, then points at Sans. Sans, feeling uncomfortably paid-attention to, shifts awkwardly on the bed. It squeaks horrifically under his weight. “Welp, I’m out -” he starts, but Frisk shakes their head vigorously. 

“Stay,” they say quietly. “Can we...” they ask, looking imploringly at their mother.

“Want me to leave?” he offers, still half-shifting his weight off the bed. He’s not even sure what his face is doing at this point, and he kind of hopes he’s not smiling for fear that the turn of his mouth would be horrifying. 

They shake their head. “Would you like some time with Sans?” Toriel asks, surprised. Sans can’t blame her. Given the kid’s reaction to him earlier, he’s shocked himself. 

But Frisk nods. Toriel looks at Sans, her face morphed into a strange combination of worry and warning, and eases the door shut behind her.

Sans forces himself to relax at the foot of Frisk’s bed, and keeps his voice casual when he asks “You been having nightmares, kid?” 

Toriel’s footsteps recede across the hall. Frisk doesn’t look much like they want to say anything, and they let their gaze flit around the room instead, looking for anything else to talk about. Finally, they nod. 

His grin sags. “I know the feeling, buddo.” 

Frisk looks at him, surprised. He pastes his grin back on and shrugs. He’s a bit more in control of his emotions at this point - the kid has this aura, he thinks wryly. Even when he’s upset, he can’t stand being too terrible at himself around them. “You wanna talk about ‘em?” 

They shake their head quickly. They bite their lip, and for a second Sans thinks they’re going to say something, but all they do is throw back their covers and inch a little bit closer. 

Even though he was staring directly at them with calm white pupils, he pretends not to notice them sliding toward him. He pulls a comb out of his ribcage on reflex and rubs it over his skull - a calming gesture that, while doing zilch for his scalp hygiene, soothes him a bit. He eyes the small child scooting their way across rumpled blankets to lean back on the wall beside him, sticks the comb back behind his sternum, and crosses his hands behind his head. He projects calm. He is calm. He is the very embodiment of calm and cool. 

Then Frisk stops a bit to his side to grab at his arm. It’s weird to feel the fabric of his own jacket when he’s not wearing it. He offers the kid his arm as calmly as he can, and they tug at it insistently until it’s resting on their knee. They move around to his other side and wrap their arms around his chest in a weak hug. “Hug?” they ask him quietly, using his jacket sleeve to wipe at their face. Disgusting human fluids coat the fabric. Mentally, he pulls a face. 

Sans places an awkward, bare-boned arm around Frisk’s shoulders, feeling profoundly uncomfortable. His experience with small children starts and ends with Papyrus, who only cried when small animals froze to death or when snow poffs got trampled underfoot by overzealous teenagers. Frisk, still moving slowly but gaining confidence, wiggles around like he’s a jungle gym until their legs wrap around his ribcage. Despite his obvious lack of neurons, he can feel their heart beating against his sternum. 

For a couple of minutes, they do not speak. Frisk’s sniffles peter out and their breathing evens. “I dreamed about you,” says Frisk. Understandably, the words do not fill Sans with joy. “We were in the Hall again. I was covered w-with dust, Sans, and...” Their voice breaks beyond all recognition. They struggle to get out more words, but succeed only in further filling the outside of his coat with mucus. 

He shushes them gently. They need to talk about this, Sans knows, but he also knows that right now is not the time. “I know, kid. I get those dreams too.”

Frisk looks surprised, then profoundly relieved. They sink against Sans’s t-shirt. Eventually, they nod off, their eyes drooping, and they stop fidgeting to rest their head against his clavicle. Sans tenses then forces himself to relax, alternating between concern for the kid’s skull - hardened, crusty bone is no substitute for a proper bed - and the sudden, inexplicable urge to never move again. A feeling he associates strongly with Papyrus wells up in his Soul, and before he can think twice he bumps his forehead against the crown of their head. 

They look up at him, tired and confused. He shrugs at them with his one free hand (the kid appropriated the other, one warm palm curled around his ulna). “Look, kid,” he whispers. “‘m sure this ain’t comfortable for you. Bones don’t great pillows make, eh?” 

Frisk doesn’t respond, and he looks down. Sans gently lifts their head off his shirt and lays it against a freshly-washed pillow, making his eyes burn (the pillowcase was a gift, hand-knitted by Mettaton and atrociously colored, bright pink with black accents, but Frisk loves it anyway). He adjusts the blankets around them, tucking in all the corners, straightening his jacket around their arms. They wriggle happily under the shifting fabric. He cracks a yawn and creaks the door open when Frisk’s raspy voice says “Can you stay?”

“Huh?” he responds eloquently, brain rebooting. Then his head catches up with their words. 

They repeat themself. Welp. Papyrus is going to flip a cranium when Sans doesn’t slouch down the stairs a couple of minutes before noon, hunting for breakfast. Toriel’s going to wonder why he hasn’t gone home. But Frisk’s looking at him with those wide puppy eyes, and they remind him of Papyrus’s, confound it. 

He stoically ignores the way the tension pressing on his eyebrows lifts a bit and sits stiffly with his back against the headboard. Frisk instantly dislodges the blanket (great, after all that hard work) and plops themself, jacket and all, against his chest to burrow into his ribs again. Almost instantly, they fall asleep. 

Sans takes a couple of seconds to look at the kid. He follows their chest as it rises and falls in the easy rhythm of sleep. He watches their expression relax and slowly, slowly, morph into a smile. Then, to his surprise, he falls into a deep, easy sleep.

Together they sleep, and when they sleep they do not dream. 

 

The next morning, Toriel eases the door open and muffles a snort, whipping out her phone. 

_Sent: 1 Picture._

Papyrus calls her almost immediately. He regales her with stories of his epic search for his brother behind various appliances on the off chance Sans was napping behind them, and for some reason, sounds particularly infuriated at a toaster. 

“I love that picture, it is adorable!” he gushes through the receiver when he finishes ranting about the broken toaster rack. “They both look so content! I must print it and hang it everywhere around his room! I simply cannot wait to see his expression when he sees this glorious piece of artwork everywhere!” With a satisfied _nyeh heh heh!_ he hangs up. Toriel just laughs. 

Half an hour later, when Frisk drags a sheepish Sans into the sitting room, they find Toriel immersed in a book with two steaming drinks on the table.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More tears? More tears.

After the weekend conference, Monday drags school by its toenails. After school, Frisk finds Sans outside, with Papyrus nowhere to be found. They stop and stare at the skeleton for a moment as he idles on the sidewalk, back toward them and seemingly oblivious to the commotion of flustered parents searching for their children. Sans, motivated and outside, without his brother? Unheard of. 

“Hey, kiddo,” Sans says as they approach, without turning around. He’s inspecting some sort of book very closely. The pages appear to have been custom-made very small. From Frisk’s fogged memory, the dimensions look about the same as that quantum physics book they found inside the joke book. Inside the quantum physics book inside the joke book inside the quantum physics book. Thinking about that makes their head hurt, so they don’t.

Sans halts his inspection to look up. Frisk raises an eyebrow at him and points questioningly at the book. As they start walking toward his house, Sans hands it to them. They flip through the pages idly and are besieged by drawings of all sorts of quality and size and color of various...fauna?

“‘s a book on gardening, kid,” he winks, noting their confusion. “Got it off Asgore couple of weeks back. He’s gonna be famous one day, with all the tea and gardening books he’s writing. I had to get his signature on an original copy before he gets himself too famous.” 

They flip to the first page. It’s just the name “Fluffybuns” in Sans’s own handwriting. They look at him and arch the other eyebrow. Sans and plants, really? Even the pet rock lying on his table looks to be suffering from malnutrition. 

“Trying to make a garden. I wanna see if I can make things grow, y’know?”

Frisk looks at him sideways, then shakes their head no. 

“What, what’s so suspicious about me and flowers? You don’t think I can make things grow?” he teases. “Bet you I can.”

Frisk shakes their head at him again, emphatic. “Bet you can’t.”

“I can too!” Sans shakes his head. They hand the book back. “Want to take a look at what I got, then, o small skeptic one?” 

Frisk nods their head eagerly. 

He chuckles. “Come this way, then. I got a shortcut.” 

The shortcut does not, this time, involve warping through the fabric of space. Instead, it’s a door hidden behind Sans and Papyrus’s house that leads under the ground. There’s a suspicious-looking building a little ways off from the suspicious door, but Frisk doesn’t ask. 

Frisk tugs on Sans’s sleeve as they plod down the steps, then they point at the trapdoor creaking shut over their heads. “Plants need light,” they inform him solemnly.

Sans closes his left eye slowly in a mischievous wink. “Not these ones, kiddo.” 

Frisk squints into the darkness, eager to discern the shape of these strange photophobic plants. The stairway they’re clomping down is strange and earthy, and when Frisk touches the walls, their hands come away damp and covered in clods of dirt. There’s a faint blue aura emanating from every surface of the passage. The dirt smells like starlight, like clear nights and high hills. Phosphorescence gradually introduces itself from tiny mushroom clusters embedded in the walls and the ceiling, growing in every direction, tangling through dirt and stone and open air. Frisk inspects the wall for a moment, awed at the sheer amount of life that packed itself into such a small space. They pat their hand against the surface, careful not to dislodge dirt, and tell the wall it’s doing a great job being a wall. 

“You planted all this?” Frisk asks Sans. They grab his hand as he guides them carefully down the slope. 

“These mushrooms? Nah, came with the other stuff,” he answers vaguely. Frisk sticks their tongue out at him. “What, you thought my thumb was that green? Still bone-white, sorry to disappoint. No traces of plant here. But gimme a call if you cal-see-’em,” he says, waving a hand in front of Frisk’s face.

Without any detectable change in the light from the hall, the walls on either side of Frisk fall away. In front of them sprawl hundreds of echo flowers. They’re arranged in haphazard clumps, hundreds of clusters dotted every way they look. It’s a young garden, for sure - most of the flowers are merely budding, but there are several groups within Frisk’s sight that appear fully grown. Frisk grabs one of Sans’s hands and squeezes it firmly, then pads toward the nearest clump of flowers without pausing to see the smile that spreads across Sans’s face.

Frisk pauses, allowing the quiet calm of the room to trickle over them. When they bend down, the flowers whisper the sounds of the earth: the pattering of raindrops, the chirping of birds, the rustling of wind through tall trees. They whisper hello to a thick patch and watch in amazement as their soft hello resonates throughout that corner, spreading like pollen to the next and the next until a chorus of their own soft greeting echoes back at them. They smile hugely at the flowers, which seem to wave back at them with their soft petals.

As they move farther toward the back of the cavern, the open space only multiplies in volume. The ceiling explodes higher, the walls curve farther to each direction, the floor dips lower. The mushroom clusters appear more frequently, nestling themself comfortably in fluorescent clumps near large groups of flowers and scattered on their path. Frisk carefully sidesteps every one. When they stop to listen again, nearly laying in the soft dirt by the most massive collection in the back of the cavern, they hear muffled footprints and faint humming of a song strange to them. The song sounds almost like a lullaby. Frisk rests their head in their hands, letting their hair brush against the dirt floor, and listens in an awestruck silence. Most of the words are indecipherable, but the ones they can discern are _Papyrus_ and _Toriel_ and _Snowdin_ and _reset_ and _worry_ and _hope_ and their own name, too, in Sans’s rusty warm voice in a note that sounds like pride. They sit next to that particular Echo Flower for a long, long time, just listening. 

When Sans approaches them, he plants each slippered foot in the ground with a loud thud to ensure Frisk notices his presence. For several seconds, they are quiet.

Sans scuffs the dirt under his feet. That’s Frisk’s cue to look up in alarm. “I gotta talk to you, kid.”

His face is shadowed despite the light emitted from every side by the mushrooms and the flowers. They tilt their head at him, masking their sudden trepidation with a questioning look. 

Sans’s exhale hisses out through his teeth like a high keening wind. “Kid, I...I spent a lotta time stuck in that loop.” He clenches his fists, bone clacking on bone, and his eyes shutter black. For once, for all that he talks and threatens and kids and gestures and imitates and jokes, he’s at a loss for words. 

Frisk bites down ferociously on the terrible sadness welling up within them. Their expression tightens despite themself and they _shouldn’t_ feel sad, it was their fault.

 

During their first run, Flowey sets them on guard and on edge. Scared, scraped and bruised, they flee his “kindness”. Then Toriel attacks them. They clench their fists around their butterscotch pie and do not attack because they can’t see their mother through the moisture spilling up over their eyes. Frisk stumbles out of the door of the Ruins covered in tears instead of dust, and a voice scraping in the back of their head whispers _kill them all._

Then, scared, scraped and bruised but maybe a little less alone, Frisk nods their head. Being kind gets them attacked. Papyrus is the first monster Frisk kills, and Frisk remembers every moment. They themself strike the killing blow. 

With his dying breath, the skeleton tells them that he still believed in them. 

Frisk drops to the snow and regrets, and wants their friend back. Chara leaps at the opportunity and buries Frisk in their regrets. _Worthless,_ Chara whispers to them. _Your first friend, and you killed him?_

But nobody came. 

Every encounter means another death. They can’t stop now. Chara is more than a voice, they’re a _person,_ a quasi-tangible presence who moves their hands and feet and mouth when Frisk’s limbs grow laden with exhaustion. Sometimes they can feel Sans watching them, and every time they catch his shadow around a corner they make to apologize. Every time, Chara laughs _you’re a murderer now, you killed his brother, you think he will forgive you?_

_He will never forgive you._

Undyne is next. Their fear gives them determination. Papyrus’s death gives her strength.

Twenty-seven times they die, and one time Undyne’s determination melts her to nothing. They scream, and cry, and Chara says _you can’t turn back now, you idiot!_

Mettaton. _This can’t be wrong,_ they tell themself, tearing Mettaton’s arms off with a toy knife. _He tried to kill me first,_ they justify, ripping his legs, and Chara says _Good. They’re not worth your pain._

They leave the Core, dust under their fingernails, and see Sans lurking by one of the trash cans. The voice in their head laughs, says something snarky, but they set their shoulders and approach him. As they draw closer, they see the scarf still and silent around his shoulders, framing a terrible facsimile of a grin, and their determination fails them. 

Frisk wants to reset. _What if we spared Papyrus maybe it would be different he was so kind,_ but Chara blocks their way. _This way is better, Frisk. They would have killed you without a second thought,_ says Chara, and their voice was so kind Frisk bows their head and continues.

Then the King. They can no longer show Mercy. This makes no difference. They attack the King with tears in their eyes and bring him to his knees. Flowey destroys the King. Flowey destroys them a hundred times. They can’t see his attacks because their eyes are strangely blurred and their head pounds. They want to stop, but they cannot. 

(You’re not worth their forgiveness.) 

They emerge from the Underground. Sans calls. He tells them to never return. 

They reset. 

Chara wins. 

And everyone dies, and dies, and dies, and Frisk remembers driving knives through their bodies, remembers their dust coating their skin, remembers the Underground abandoned and desolate and _we will never stop_ , says Chara, and Frisk nearly gives up -

 

“Frisk!” Sans yells. “C’mon, kid. It’s all right, I...oh Jesus, kid, this is Pap’s area, not mine. It’s okay, kid. Everything will be okay.”

The echo flowers yell “Frisk! Frisk! Frisk!” and “not mine, not mine, not mine...”

Desperately, Frisk claps two hands over their ears, trying to block out the persistent, spreading “not mine, not mine, not mine” that pounds into their eardrums like knife-sharp femurs. They take a great shuddering breath and lean further into their own legs. It looks like they’re trying to compress themself into the smallest possible space. 

For a moment, Sans regards the child, wanting to do something, but not entirely sure what he could do. He reaches over and rests a hand on the kid’s shoulder - they’ll want a hug later, probably - then, with great deliberation, Sans leans toward the nearest echo flower and whispers “love.” 

Love, says the echo flower, and love says the next, and love says the next, until their part of the garden whispers Sans’s affection. Like a flower unravelling its leaves toward the sun, Frisk uncovers their ears.

Sans looks around himself, and the cavern is suddenly really, really big. The ceilings are too high, the space is too wide, the mushrooms too dim. “I’m gonna pick you up,” he says, then mentally pats himself on the back. Picking them up would serve to get them somewhere more private and also give them some physical affection. Nice. He’s the best planner. 

Sans waits for them to nod shakily before wrapping them in his arms. Instantly, they bury their face in his chest. He rests a hand at the base of their skull and, remembering instincts buried from the era of Taking Care of Papyrus, threads his fingers in the hairs at the base of their head. It doesn’t feel quite as familiar, feeling all these hairs, as does feeling hard bone, but the kid seems to breathe a bit easier. 

“This isn’t a great place for this conversation. Not with all these guys around repeating everything we say. Now that I’ve given ‘em a message to remember, let’s relocate, yeah? I got just the room for us, kiddo.” Sans readjusts them, wrapping their hand around his own. Although his bones are cool, their hands feel nice on his. Solid. 

Around them, the flowers still whisper love love love. 

Sans carries them further to the side of the cave, toward the looming back wall. For several minutes, the wall does not appear to be getting any closer to the two travelers, until suddenly they’re close enough to run a palm along the earth. 

“Well, here we go,” announces Sans. He sets them down, steadies them when they stumble, and with an amount of effort Frisk rarely sees from him, he literally lifts a portion of the wall, hand wisping the same faint blue emanating from the ceiling. 

Behind the wall is another, much smaller cavern. The dirt is lined with so many mushrooms that it could be illuminated by sunlight. In the center is a single echo flower. 

“I come down here to tan sometimes,” says Sans, and sits himself against one wall, brushing aside a couple of mushrooms to make space for himself.

Frisk slides down next to Sans and looks a tentative question at him. Already, the cavern feels lighter, less crowded. “Good for recording conversations,” Sans explains. “Also a much brighter atmosphere, you know? Not quite Grillby’s, but hey. Plants and fire don’t mix well anyway.” 

Frisk curls themself into a loose ball by Sans’s side, knees to chest. Sans lets the minutes trickle by in silence, but the kid doesn’t uncurl. He sighs. “Frisk, look at me. When I met you in the Judgment Hall and we...well, we had our confrontation. What was going through your head?”

After a couple of seconds of looking around, they shrug and turn their face the other way. Sans hums and asks again, the same tone he used when trying to coax milk from baby Papyrus. 

Frisk clearly doesn’t want to respond. Eventually, though, they stare directly in front of themself and mutter “Wasn’t just me.” Sans looks confused, they see out of the corner of their eye, but he doesn’t interject. Into the silence, they continue. “Wasn’t me. It wasn’t...it was never just me, Sans.” They bury their face into their hands and stop talking abruptly. 

He waits. They reach down to the ground and run their hands repetitively over the nearest mushroom cap, feeling its dry, scaly skin rasp against their fingers. “When I first fell down, I was scared. Everyone I met was trying to k-kill me. And there was something, maybe fear, that was talking to me as I kept going and it kept telling me that the only way was self-defense.”

Even to their own ears, their words sound like pleas. They glance to the side, but Sans says nothing, passes no judgment. He’s changed, quite suddenly, from a caring and empathetic quasi-brother to impassive blank slate. Their hands start to clench around the mushroom, but they realize what they’re doing and return to stroking it instead. “It felt like someone else, someone else in the back of my head. It started when they told me to kill the monsters in the Ruins and I didn’t do that, and I didn’t kill T-Toriel either, but then in Snowdin...even though I didn’t want to kill anyone I did anyway because I just kept getting attacked and d-dying and I thought I was doing something wrong. Then Papyrus...I was so scared and as soon as I...I wanted him back, Sans, but the other voice, they told me...” 

Frisk pauses to bite down on their lip, hard. They yank their face out from their crossed arms, and try to ignore the tears that trickle and itch over their cheekbones. The light has disappeared from Sans’s eyes. “Then Undyne. And Mettaton, and Asgore, and every time I k-killed someone the voice got stronger until I couldn’t...they’re the ones that stabbed Asgore, it wasn’t me! And then they fought Flowey and it was so _easy_ for them and I could feel every move they made because it was me, but it wasn’t, and then they made it...we made it out of the Underground and they wanted to reset and I just wanted...I just wanted to say sorry. You watched me a lot, the first time, and I think you wanted to kill me but you never did. I wanted to say sorry to Papyrus...” Here Frisk has to break off to wipe their nose. And their eyes. They hate crying. They shouldn’t be the ones crying. They don’t deserve to cry. 

“Then they reset. They called themself C-Chara. Chara...they r-reset, and they killed _everything._ They knew...knew how many m-monsters were in the Underground, in each t-town, like...” Frisk trails off. Chokes and tears have mauled their voice nearly beyond comprehension. Each word comes out more as an impression of syllables than a coherent fragment. They have to pause to wipe their entire face. Then they lift their chin, face still twisted in agony, and continue speaking, propelling their words with sheer determination. 

“They killed e-everything, including Toriel, and then P-papyrus and Undyne and Mettaton and then t-they...they got to y-you, Sans.” 

(He will never forgive you.)

Frisk stops speaking, because they can no longer form words. Sans offers no consolation. His eyes are beginning to glow hard blue and dart from side to side, as if seeing the events Frisk describes as they speak. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” they repeat between their own sobs and it becomes the only thing they can say, and they unclench their fists and sign _i’m sorry i’m sorry i’m sorry i killed them_ over and over again when their voice cracks and their throat is too dry to breathe. 

They do not notice when Sans takes a deep, shuddering breath, and the warm white light to which they are accustomed returns to his eyes. 

“Alright, kiddo,” he says, rubbing a hand over his own elbow. 

They suck in a deep breath, willing themself to stop crying, and choke the first few times they try to form words. Eventually, they give up. 

“I gotta ask,” he continues, when Frisk’s breathing semi-settles. He still can’t look at them. They can’t look at anything, with their eyes brimming with saline and painfully bloodshot. “You still got that voice in your head, kiddo?”

They lift their hands minutely from where they’ve buried their face and shake their head against their palms. “I haven’t heard f-from them recently.” 

Sans blows out a breath - he hadn’t even realized his lungs were holding that much air, wow - and leans back. “Then. In that Hall, you’d almost won. Why? Why’d you keep goin’?”

Frisk takes a deep breath. The still air whistles uncomfortably on their raw throat, and they cough several times before they can reliably speak. “I got really angry,” they say quietly, burying their face in their hands again. “I...I didn’t want Chara to kill you, so I...I made them Spare you, and they were really unhappy with me, but when we got back...

“Knowing I could save you filled me with determination. I had only Spared you once but, the next time, when they won, I saw you d-die. And then I m-made them leave, b-but you were still dead, so I reset, and I...I tried again,” they say. Sans can’t make out all the words, still, but their hands are flitting from sign to sign as they speak, so when something indistinguishably marred by pain comes from their mouth, he fills in the gap with their unsteady hand motions. “I knew...I knew you remembered, and I...I knew you had seen this, seen everyone die, so many times, and I d-didn’t want to keep doing that, even though I didn’t really know you, so...I got really upset with Chara, and I shoved them out, and...they were surprised, so when I made us reset we had no LV and they were weak again and they tried whispering again but this time I asked Toriel about her snail facts instead of asking about the Ruins like Chara told me to, and her pie was so delicious when she baked it and she...she helped me and I didn’t want to kill her, I didn’t want to kill anyone in the Ruins, so I didn’t. And then I met you again and I knew you were scared and really confused so I l-laughed with Papyrus and t-told you that Junior Jumble is h-harder even though it isn’t because I w-wanted to make Papyrus happy.” 

At this point, Frisk’s mouth can’t even form coherent words. Instead, Sans gets their words from their tapered fingers. He listens to their voice for their raw emotion.

“And I realized that I loved Papyrus too...n-not in a date way, ha, but you already k-know that of course but he was so g-good to me and he didn’t remember that I killed him and he told me...he told me he believed in me, e-even when I...” Frisk takes a deep, shuddering breath. It doesn’t much help their voice box. “I’m r-rambling,” they say quietly, and Sans almost doesn’t hear it because they’ve clenched their hands into fists. “Sorry.” 

Sans takes a moment to process. 

“Let me get this straight, kid.” He bites off the hard k and they flinch. Unbidden, he hears Papyrus forgive the human mere _seconds_ after his body melts into the snow, and a spear of anger shoots through his chest. A small part of him demands revenge. Demands to see the kid suffer. 

Sans viciously tells that part of him to shut up and consciously softens his tone, shaking his head a bit to dissipate the images that have congregated in front of his pupils. Pixel by pixel, the imaginary crimson of Papyrus’s scarf gives way to the calming blue of the Echo Flower. “There’s someone - something else in you.” 

Frisk nods, a small hesitant movement of their head.

“The one who wanted to kill everyone.”

Another nod.

“So every LV, every EXP you got, came from Chara.” 

A yes. They bite their lip. Then, “except for...except for the ones in the f-first run.”

Sans shakes his head. He was right. “Kid, sounds like this isn’t all you.”

Frisk looks at him like he’s crazy. Maybe he is; he hasn’t decided either way. 

“How can you...Sans, I killed everyone!” they exclaim, like he needs a reminder. Their eyes get really wide, and as if the weight of their shattered Souls just now press on their shoulders, they hunch over again, holding their stomach.

Sans curses mentally, he’d meant for that statement to help, not hurt, but the kid isn’t rational. He wonders if they’ve talked about this with anyone then almost laughs, of course not, who could they tell?

As he watches, their hands continue a ceaseless mantra of _i’m sorry i’m sorry i’m sorry._

Emotions, Sans thinks, should burn in hell. He grabs their hands tight, stilling their apologies, and waits for them to look back up. Their eyes are rimmed with red and woefully wet.

“Kid, you were scared. Killing is bad, and you know that, I don’t even gotta say that to you. First time, you made it all the way through the Ruins with that freak in your head. And look, kid - that Sparing? That was all you. The killing later - kid, that wasn’t you. It wasn’t.”

He tries to catch their gaze, but they stare melancholically at the Echo Flower. To catch their attention, Sans leans forward, right into their line of vision. “Look, Frisk. ‘s been a couple of months I’ve gotten to know you. Since I’ve gotten to know the real you, anyway. When you killed more, sounds like this Chara character tricked you. And at the end, kid, it wasn’t even you. 

“But let’s be real.” He shrugs and grins at them. “I kinda figured that somethin’ like this was the gig. You’re not like that other child, at all.

“I know what it is to be mad at yourself. But I also know what it is to be justified in being mad at yourself. And lemme tell you this. Your capacity for love is _astonishing._ You fought off the demon plaguing your head when you saw them threaten me, kid. Those are some powerful affections, kid. I’m flattered, really.” 

Their eyes are watering again, and even as he watches they scrub at their eyes, trying to pretend they’re not upset. “‘s easy to be mad at yourself, kid. Takes more to forgive yourself. Ain’t even logical, what you’re feeling. But you wanted a judgment, kid? Here it is.” 

He makes sure they’re watching him, then turns his hands face-up. He takes the first two fingers of his right hand and brushes them against his other palm.

_I forgive you._

Frisk tries to smile back (he’s smiling? so he is, huh). They make a pretty good effort, at least until their face crumples like paper under someone’s fist and they bawl, loud terrible hiccuping noises that echo around the cavern and make Sans want to pick the kid up and never let go. They latch onto Sans and grab his shirt - yep, there’s the hug, he thinks wryly - and try to breathe through the fabric. Sans shifts from his sitting position and wraps an arm around their shoulders, drawing them a bit closer. His shirt is going to get so gross. Oh well, it’s already filthy with dirt, he reasons. Wasn’t like he was going to wash it anyway. 

He doesn’t doubt the kid, he realizes, not for a second. The line between Chara and his kid, his Frisk, couldn’t be clearer. 

He loves them for it. 

Sans mutters quiet reassurances until their sobs subside and their uneven hiccups fade to nothing. He waits until they look up, and he gives them the softest, most genuine smile he’s given anyone in a long time.

His face makes them burst back into tears. 

They rub at their face with the crook of their elbow for an unreasonably long time - all those tears are on his shirt anyway, how much water do humans have in those small bodies, exactly, are they going to be okay? - before smushing their face back against his arm. 

“Aw, sh - heck, kid, no don’t cry...sorry, Frisk, sorry, is my grin really that scary?” he asks, mostly to himself and only half-kidding. Sometimes he loses track of his smile and his face does scary things. His rhetorical question is rewarded when the kid starts giggling, weakly at first, but then louder and more watery. 

Sans sighs, and pulls Frisk’s face up to meet his. Gently, he uses one solid thumbpad to wipe the tears off their cheeks. 

To his surprise, they giggle, a tiny little snort that seems to escape without their knowledge. “Your finger feels funny.” 

Sans grins, hugely relieved at the wonderfully familiar laugh. He shrugs with a bit more energy than he planned. “I am just made of puns and jokes. Half my arm is _humerus._ ”

Frisk frowns a wobbly faux-frown at him, stretching the corners of their mouth down as far as their muscles can go. “‘s such an old pun.”

“Great puns never go stale. They get better every time you patella them.” Sans chuckles at their expression and runs his hand through their hair. They curl closer around his other arm and poke at him, giggling for reasons beyond him. 

Sans watches Frisk laugh for a couple of precious moments. He wishes he had a camera. “Wow, bud, don’t knock yourself out,” he mutters under his breath, and is rewarded with another laugh. 

“Sorry about that,” they tell him, and poke his arm one more time, for good measure. They sit up a bit, not entirely releasing his arm, and wrinkle a nose at the stains on his shirt. 

“I’m thinkin’ about instituting a shirt-test,” he jokes, shrugging. “All my clothes have gotta be able to hold a certain amount of water and kid-snot before i wear ‘em.” 

“Ew,” they laugh and pound a fist lightly on his shoulder. They squish their face against a part of his shirt that’s not disgusting. “Sans, that’s gross!” 

“Nah, kid, that’s reasonable. Just giving ‘em a thread-hold to surpass before they’re suit-able for me to wear.” 

They let out a mock-groan and kick him in the leg. As of right now, they’re too tired to offer verbal reprimands. 

For several long minutes, the only sound is the rustling of the Echo Flower and their breathing. 

Then Sans breaks the silence. “One more thing,” he says, and their contentedness fades into trepidation. They jerk away from him, frowning again, their face dripping with muted fear. He hates himself a bit, for robbing them of that smile. They let go of his arm entirely and sit on edge, as if their instincts are stretched between stay and flee. He pats their head one more time, trying to convey his lack of ill will, and almost doesn’t ask. 

But he has to know. “Frisk, can you still...can you still reset?”

If tongues were made of bones, Sans would have snapped his in half. Every bone in his body feels as though someone’s hooked two electrodes and a lemon to it - sparking and crackly and tense, unpleasant. He watches their face carefully.

Frisk nods. 

Sans grits his teeth, feeling his jaw lock, rigid. Like the flip of a switch, his emotions turn a one-eighty, the contentedness of earlier vanishing to nothing. 

He was so close, so close to a perfect happy ending. He wants to scream, to cry, to curl in a ball and never move. He doesn’t. Instead, he slaps a grin on his face, feeling it splinter across his cheeks, and keeps on trudging through the cycle. 

“Frisk,” he starts. His voice does not shake with desperation. “You don’t gotta promise anything, ‘m not gonna ask for that. But...are you happy in this timeline?” 

He doesn’t ask _are we gonna bore you? Are you gonna send all of us - back to that underground hell?_

Frisk hears every unspoken question plain in Sans’s eyes as clearly as if he had spoken them aloud. They study his face for a second, contemplating something beyond his grasp. Any hesitancy evaporates from their answer. 

“No,” say their eyes and their lips and their hands in one confident motion. “No, I’m happy here. I wouldn’t do that.” they trail off quietly, looking fixedly at the lone echo flower, bearing silent witness to every word. “Sans, I’m happy. I wouldn’t trade this for anything.” 

Sans exhales slowly and settles back against the wall, uncomfortably aware of Frisk’s scrutiny, and starts to smile again. “Thanks, buddo. I’m glad -“

“‘m not done yet,” they say gently, uncrossing their arms from over their chest and letting their head drop against the wall. “I know you didn’t want to ask. But I promise, Sans. I promise that I will do everything in my power to never reset this timeline. I wouldn’t...I couldn’t do that to you.” 

Suddenly, Sans can’t breathe. But they’re still not done. The corner of their mouth quirks up in a smile, an uncertain shadow of a grin. “Not for all the apostrophe dogs you could stack on my head.”

He feels lighter. It’s a nice feeling. It’s been a long time since he’s felt light. He would cry, except he’s not going to cry in front of Frisk. So he laughs instead, even if that laugh is a bit more watery than it should be. “Glad to hear it, kid,” and he doesn’t know if he could ever quite put that gladness into words. A strange feeling settles over him. It’s unfamiliar. Is it happiness? Maybe. Maybe it’s the desire to do something. Productivity, he decides. That has to be it. It’s been a long time since he’s done something productive. “I am really, really glad to hear it.” 

He drops his forehead to his side until it touches the top of Frisk’s skull, then gives up on being lazy and shifts his entire body until Frisk can curl properly into his bony chest and he can wrap both arms around their shoulders. Warmth flutters in his ribcage, adding to this feeling. Curious, how their relief stacked with his make him feel freer, not heavier. 

Frisk makes themself at home snuggled comfortably under his arm, testing out several resting places for their cheek before deciding to shift their legs on top of his, too, then curl their hands onto his jacket. Their face relaxes, and even when they close their eyes, there’s a soft grin on their face. If they were a cat, Sans catches himself thinking, they would be purring, and it would be adorable. Sans wants to call the conversation quits right there. He can almost feel the innocence radiating off the small precious child tucked under his arm. 

He takes their hand, gently, then without giving himself time to doubt, he lands a kiss on Frisk’s forehead. They smile, surprised, then smack their lips against his bony cheek. Human saliva is wet and sticky, weird. 

“Heh heh, kid. I appreciate it.” 

In the background, the Echo Flower replays their conversation, bored with their silence and eager to repeat. Sans can hear the earth shifting behind him, the gentle humming of the Echo Flowers in the main cavern. He idly adjusts his grip around Frisk and somehow they pull themself closer. Eventually, Sans drops his forehead onto Frisk’s hair, and they hum contentedly. 

They lose track of time. Both of them don’t want to move, not really, but Toriel’s going to miss them at dinner. 

“Ready to get back above ground?” he asks their hair. He stands up, without letting the kid’s hand out of his grip, and turns to look at the door. 

They nod eagerly. Their throat is still raw, their voice is still sore, their eyes are still red and Sans’s jacket is still damp and disgusting. But they latch onto his hands anyway and skip happily past the rows and rows and rows of echo flowers. Around them, the garden whispers love love love.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The beginning of the plot!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let Toriel Say Fuck

Sans jolts awake to the sound of a horribly out-of-tune recorder tooting _My Heart Will Go On_. Yawning hugely, he fumbles around with his jacket, sticks a hand up his ribs and withdraws his phone. It’s either Toriel or Papyrus, and at this time of night...yep, it’s Toriel. 

This time he remembers to swipe before responding. “Heya, Tori. What’s up?” 

She’s not calm enough to make a direction pun, so Sans flashsteps into the bathroom. Not a courtesy call, then. “Frisk is troubled again. I am sorry to call so much, Sans, but you truly seem to help them through their nightmares and I do not know how to emulate what you do.”

He can practically hear her wringing her hands. These episodes have only grown more and more frequent over the past week. “Practice,” he tells her, even though that doesn’t make sense, laughing shortly to himself. He’s sure that his role in their nightmares is quite the opposite of helpful. _Phone in hand, keys in back pocket, tissues also in hand, Glamburger in another pocket somewhere_. “Be over in a few minutes.”

“Thank you,” says Toriel, and disconnects.

Sans jogs up the steps, two at a time, and creaks open the door to Papyrus’s room. “Pap?” Sans whispers into the dark. Papyrus doesn’t respond, continuing to murmur unintelligibly in his sleep. As Sans draws closer, his words start to sound like lyrics. They sound perfectly committed to memory, Sans notes with amusement.

He shakes one of Pap’s shoulders, a set of bones rarely seen outside his battle body. In commemoration of the third month on the surface, Papyrus resolved to wash his battle body once a month. “Pap, I gotta head out.”

Papyrus opens his eyes blearily. “Brother? What is happening? Does the human need assistance?”

“Yeah. Sorry, Pap, I’m gonna get to Tori’s. Want to join us for breakfast tomorrow?”

“I would love to, brother! Nyeh heh heh! Tell the human that I love them.” 

“Will do, bro.” Sans readjusts Papyrus’s covers, earning a smile. “You’re the best brother.”

“I know! And you are the second best!”

Sans laughs again. He knows Toriel will not mind Papyrus joining them for breakfast. Besides, Papyrus’s boundless enthusiasm helps the kid feel better after a bad night.

 

Except Frisk isn’t having nightmares. 

Toriel sits in a chair dragged over to Frisk’s bedside, watching Sans hover over Frisk’s shoulder. They’re not making nightmare noises, and to himself Sans hates that he knows the sounds the kid makes in distress. (Helps a bit that he’s killed them hundreds of times.)

Frisk has a fever. He presses two fingers against their forehead and can feel the heat burning even through his bones. Their skin is hot and clammy, and when Sans presses his temple against their chest their breathing is unsteady. 

“Tori, this isn’t a nightmare. Frisk is sick.”

Toriel stares at him for a second, face blank and uncomprehending, then spits a vehement curse. Sans stares at her in shock, lifting his head from Frisk’s chest to look at her properly. He’s never heard _that_ particular word from her. Then her entire face contorts in some strange amalgam of horror and shock, fists clenching around nothing. Slowly, the surprise trickles out of her face, leaving anguish in its wake. Her face twists up and her eyebrows contract and with sharp movements she leans back into her chair and drops her face into her hands. 

“Hey, you okay?” Sans asks, abruptly out of his element.

“I am fine,” she replies in a tone of voice that means that she is very much not fine. Despite the hands covering her face, her tone remains sharp. 

He tells her she doesn’t _sound_ fine, keeping the snark as far from his voice as possible. To his eternal gratefulness, his inner cynic does not in fact tether him to a five-mile sarcasm radius, and his voice comes out gentle. 

She brushes him off anyway. “I am fine,” she repeats, rolling up her sleeves and standing. She can’t seem to stand fully, and sort of hunches over, so that his head now comes up to her collarbone, instead of her elbow, like normal. “But Frisk is not, and I should delay no longer in healing them. Please step aside -” 

“Wait!” Sans cautions, eyes latching onto her outstretched hands. His explanation jumbles out of his mouth. “Magic doesn’t work the same way on human Souls. Magic - healing magic works different on humans, ‘cause the problem isn’t with their Souls, it’s with their bodies. We’ll have to heal their body, probably with human remedies.” 

With each word, her face grows colder, until she’s staring, stone-faced and frostily furious, at a point around his right shoulder. Even though he knows her glare isn’t directed at him, Sans feels a thrill of fear shoot up his chest. “I’m sorry,” he concludes lamely. 

Toriel seats herself again, face unmoving, like her features are scraped into ice. “I am all right,” she tells him, still looking Pretty Not All Right. “I should not have expected to be useful in this regard, knowing still so little about human illness. Please attend to my child.” 

Sans flinches at the self-deprecation in her voice, but for lack of anything useful to say, he turns back to trying to diagnose Frisk.

As soon as she’s out of his line of sight, he hears a suspicious shifting of fabric, and her breathing becomes uneven. Sans conscientiously ignores the hiccups in her breath and the catches in her throat, allowing her privacy. He debates doing something, something soothing, but nothing comes to mind. Instead, he works in silence, waiting for her stifled sobs to fade.

He busies himself by grabbing their hand and testing the mobility of their joints. He’s...not actually sure if that does anything, but it’s better than loitering uncomfortably. After he flexes their first three fingers five times, he falls back on his previous medical training and regains the presence of mind to check, well, their heartbeat.

Finally, her breathing evens. “Um, can I get ya anything?” he asks, tripping over his own words.

“Just help them,” she replies firmly. Though it’s rough around the edges, her voice is stronger than he’d expect. 

“‘f course,” he tells her, still affording her privacy, and keeps working.

After several long moments, during which she takes four long, deep breaths, Toriel stands to join him, observing his movements. He shifts to make room for her at Frisk’s bedside. “How are they faring?” she asks as calmly as she can.

Sans sighs, pressing his palm against their forehead. “They’re running a fever - at least, their head feels hotter than it normally does.” 

“Are we certain that this means human sickness?” she asks, voice tinged with desperation. 

He winces and tries to disguise his meaning in jargon. “There are other mammal-type monsters that happens to when they’re sick, so we can probably extrapolate the symptoms without too much error.”

She winces too. Obviously, his obfuscation didn’t work. “Have you treated monsters before?”

“A couple of times,” Sans replies evasively. He presses two fingers against Frisk’s neck and grimaces. “Heartbeat’s unstable. Could you give Al a ring? She...well, their heart isn’t sounding too great.” 

Toriel nods decisively and stands briskly, grateful for some concrete action to take. She continues watching him - he keeps doing whatever he’s doing, his movements look fluid and practiced enough that she trusts him (though she’s going to interrogate him later) - and her hands tremble as she dials Dr. Alphys. 

“H-hello? T-toriel, is that you?” Alphys’s yawning voice crackles over the speakers.

“Yes, Doctor,” she replies, and to her embarrassment her voice catches on Alphys’s title. She clears her throat to get rid of the tension balled in her throat. “My apologies for such a late call. Could you please spare a visit? Frisk is...unwell.” 

“How unwell?”

“Unwell enough that we cannot wake them. According to Sans, they are suffering a fever and their heartbeat is ‘unstable.’”

There is a pause on the other end of the line, then a bad word spews from the Doctor’s mouth that makes Toriel blink. “Undyne!” Alphys’s voice calls faintly, as if she’s stuck her hand over the phone. “Undyne, the kid’s not doing great, we gotta go.” Then the voice returns to the receiver. A faint scraping noise issues through it as well, as if Alphys had rubbed the phone against her earplates, or just stuck it between her shoulder and her head. “We’re on our w-way,” she says absently. In the background, metallic objects, clang against one another. 

From far away, Undyne’s voice yells “What do we need, Al?”

“Grab that, and the stethoscope - no, not the xylophone mallet, why do we even have that, the other rod with the circle on the top, yes that.” Alphys’s voice is loud even from far away, and commanding. Then her voice returns to the phone, this time softer. “Sorry, your Majesty. We’ll both be over as soon as we can.”

_Click._

 

Sans is still poking and prodding at Frisk by the time Alphys arrives. “Hey, Doc,” he greets her. He sticks his hands in his pockets casually, but moves hastily out of her way as she bustles through the doorframe. Already, she’s pulling out an assortment of plastic and metallic objects, some of which could be easily modified into weapons. “Kid’s running a fever, probably five-ish degrees over normal. Can’t really tell with bone,” he grins without light in his eyes and wiggles his fingers at her, “but I did the best I could.”

Dr. Alphys nods along with his report and smoothly applies some sort of cylinder inside Frisk’s mouth. Though she doesn’t understand entirely what’s happening, Toriel watches the proceedings with keen, intensely worried eyes. 

“Heartbeat’s running slow,” he continues, and without speaking she draws something made of crackly, sticking material (Velcro?) and wraps it around Frisk’s arm. It’s attached to a box with a bunch of buttons. Alphys’s claws skitter expertly over the dials and knobs. “Blood pressure high as well,” he mutters, looking at the box over her shoulder.

Sans grabs a different cylinder, this one marked in even gradations and with a sharp, wickedly fine needle attached to its end. Toriel bites her tongue until he moves to stick it in their wrist. “What is that?” Toriel intervenes sharply, concern boiling over from her gut. 

Sans and Alphys blink at her, as if remembering in unison that the room holds more than three occupants. “‘s a syringe,” Sans tells her casually, tapping the end gently with his finger. Given that he’s made entirely of bone, his lack of injury does nothing to reassure her. “Nothin’ bad, it’s just in case we gotta give ‘em some medicine.” 

“It looks unsafe,” she says, trying to even out the dangerous sparks in her voice. 

“I-it’s fine, its c-completely safe,” Alphys butts in, looking between Sans and her Queen with wide, uncertain eyes. “I prepared i-it myself, before getting here, I figured they had...a cold, w-with the c-cold weather, so they’d need...that...”

Toriel does not look impressed. Alphys clacks her claws together. “T-tell you what, your Majesty, i-it’s probably not essential right now, so...if w-we need to use it, we’ll, uh, let y-you know before we, er, d-do anything.” 

Toriel acquiesces. Sans and Alphys she can trust, but had any other white coat attempted to pull a needle on her child, the situation would have unfolded in a vastly different manner. 

Sans and Alphys trade a look, and Al rummages through the bag again, pulling out more foreign objects. They both appear to slip back into their strange, oddly familiar routine. Sans appears to be ticking things off his fingers. His posture is relaxed but his eyes are sharp. This is not a part of Sans that Toriel has witnessed before. “Witnessed a couple of muscle spasms concentrated in the upper chest. Probably some sort of rapid increase in sodium, maybe potassium?”

“Sodium,” Alphys says, then procures a notebook from somewhere, which she hands to Sans. He takes it without looking at her, hands moving on automatic. He flips through the pages as confidently as if he’d written the book himself, although the handwriting is Alphys’s. The Doctor roots through her bag full of metal things and pulls out another metal thing, which she secures around Frisk’s wrist and pumps with her hands. Sans pulls a pen out from one of his pockets. Alphys calls out numbers - 102, she hears, and diastolic, both of which engrave furrows in both of their faces. Sans smooths the page and scribbles her readings onto the neatly lined page.

“You got any idea what’s going on?” Undyne whispers.

Toriel sits back on the chair mutely, shaking her head, hands curling into fists despite herself. She’d learned healing magic 10X years ago, for this _specific purpose_ , and now she’s completely useless. How could she not have been prepared for this?

Without her consent, her breathing hitches again, and part of her wants to roll her eyes because _logically_ there’s nothing she can do to help, but emotionally there’s a deep-set frustration boiling up from her gut, a buried self-loathing that resurfaces itself, she thought she’d locked it away 10X years ago and thrown away the key, but apparently she was wrong. 

Unbidden, she sees her first children, one bedridden and one anxious - sees them passing, day by day, sees herself bent over their bed for hours, bags painted underneath her eyelids and hands shaking from exhaustion - sees Asgore motivating them, skipping meeting after meeting, counsel after counsel to stay by their side - sees her scrambled attempts at healing magic, sees her own magic seep into their immune system and wind up, ultimately, ineffective and useless - sees dear Asriel bringing them water and food and stories and their favorite flowers, despite their unconsciousness - sees their Souls shatter over the garden, slump to nothing with the mutated, horrendous body of her son -

Through the sheer force of her will she shoves the images to the recesses of her brain, forcing her spine straighter. As she gazes upon the Delta Rune on the headrest, she forces herself to see not the inscription on her son’s statue but the pillow supporting Frisk’s head. 

Despite her best efforts, she can hear herself singing his lullaby through the thick, suffocating fog of memory.

Finally, Sans puts the notebook down, and Alphys slumps back onto Frisk’s bed. “‘s not good,” he says, and tiredness slurs his words. Toriel squeezes her eyes shut, willing her mind back to the present. He fights back a yawn as he speaks, and the hand with which he covers his mouth shakes. “Kid ain’t looking great - runnin’ a fever, high blood pressure, slow heartbeat. Don’t know if that means anything to you, but...kid’s sick. Pretty bad. I gotta go...I gotta go hit up the new library, see if there are...any new, y’know, human treatments we c’n use. I’ll be back, Tori. Al and I...I’m gettin’ her books too, so we’ll read over here, and we’ll let you know what you can do. I’ll be right back.” He stumbles out the door, then emits a quiet “stupid door” and disappears from within the doorframe. 

“Y-your Majesty,” Alphys stutters, removing her glasses to scrub at her eyes. “Sans will be retrieving books for b-both of us. And. We will work to find a solution. But I believe we can do it! I believe that Frisk will be okay. We just have to figure out what to do to make them feel better, and then...a-and then they will get better.” 

Alphys puts her glasses back on and looks at Frisk, sighing deeply. Her optimistic mask slips off her face like water sliding off her scales. “S-sorry, your Majesty. It’s been a long time since...since we had someone to diagnose. Sans and I, we’re a bit...rusty.” She chuckles awkwardly.

Toriel draws in another deep breath, glances at the Rune above Frisk’s forehead, and smiles. “You worked very well together.” 

Alphys blushes, surprised. “T-thank you, Sans is great. We...we actually used to collaborate!”

“Sans used to work with you?!” Undyne exclaims, concern temporarily forgotten. “He’s just a lazy sack of bones!”

“Heh...heh, w-well he wasn’t always.” Alphys forces a laugh out of her mouth like she’s whacking a sack of flour, face flushing bright blue. “‘scuse me, your Majesty, I’m gonna go wash my face thank you bye.” 

Looking uncomfortable, Alphys scuttles out of the room. 

Toriel hums thoughtfully, looking at the fallen child strewn across her bed. She side-eyes Undyne. For all that their tempers clash, she cannot help but notice the plainly worried look on Undyne’s face as she, too, gazes with open anxiety at Frisk. 

“When I cared for my child, I remember some small things that worked. Undyne, will you help me?” she asks. 

“Of course!” Undyne responds, bouncing to her feet and grinning her sharp-edged grin. “What can I do, your Majesty?”

Toriel understands intimately the need to, at this moment, be useful. “First we will need a rag with water, both of which can be found in the kitchen cabinet. I will prepare some soup - without snails, this time - and I believe their favorite music player is still on the kitchen table. Could you retrieve those things for me?”

Undyne bounds off down the hallway, yelling “Of course, Toriel!” as she leaves. For the first time in weeks, Undyne leaves behind her typical style of closing doors - a slam that rattles the frame - at the threshold of Frisk’s room. 

Toriel’s smile grows sad, and nearly without thinking, she begins to hum. To give Undyne a task, no matter how small, will alleviate her concern. 

However, she does not quite believe that soup and some lullabies will cure her child.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (P.S. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2WH8mHJnhM )


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just wrapped up my APs, so here you go!

Sans staggers back in a couple of hours later, enough books cradled in his hands and pockets and hood to fill half of Toriel’s bookshelves. He and Alphys relocate promptly to Toriel’s dining table and waste no time spreading all manner of notebook and writing implement and journal across every inch of the wooden surface. 

While they set up their veritable fortress of papers and stress, Toriel and Undyne take up station by Frisk’s bed. With Toriel’s permission, Undyne calls Asgore, and several hours later - about 3:00, by Toriel’s reckoning, though she is still adjusting to this terranean cycle of sun and stars - Asgore pushes gently through Frisk’s door.

The minutes tick-tock on by. Silence blankets the room, like a smothering tarp. It’s stifling. 

No matter how hard she tries, Toriel still can’t seem to breathe properly. If she looks at Frisk the wrong way she’ll see little Chara, proudly handing her a pie of their own invention; or Asriel drawing on the floor while Chara hums a cheery tune; or Asriel teaching Chara how to make chains of flowers. Her expression breaks, a little bit, but she reins it in with iron mental fortitude. That, at least, she has in remarkable abundance.

Asgore glances at her and his expression softens. Once upon a time, he might have wrapped her in a hug, and she might have felt better. Now she does not permit it. 

 

When Papyrus strolls through the door, he ambles right into a disaster zone. Sans and Alphys hunch over the table. Their workspace has been conjoined with several other desks pulled in from various rooms, a couple of which Undyne hand-hauled from the Lab, plus stacked cushions appropriated from Toriel’s couch, the skeleton of which is threadbare and miserable-looking. A small army of drained cups rings around their elbows. A coffee stain stares unhappily at the world from the carpet fibers next to Sans’s slipper. 

Alphys’s fingers clack against one another as she hurriedly scrawls down notes on the text she’s reading. Sans is hunched so low over his book - more than 100 pages, Papyrus notes with awe, what happened to motivate his brother to read all of _that?_ \- that his eyes illuminate half the page even without the warm light flickering overhead. 

Papyrus gingerly picks his way through the strewn papers, some of which are balled up and look to have claw marks tearing through their middle, and approaches the table and says “What is happening? This is not breakfast.”

Sans jolts and blinks three times, quickly. “Oh. Heh heh, sorry, Pap. It’s...gonna be a little while before Tori makes breakfast.” He pulls his chair back on the carpet and nearly falls when one of the back legs of the chair catches on a tome entitled _Diastolic and Systolic Blood Pressure in Humans: Causes, Effects and Treatments_. Sans shoots the book a dirty glare before readjusting. He leans back on two chair legs, reaching for his book again. “Frisk...isn’t doing great, Pap. You should go check on ‘em. They’re all in Frisk’s bedroom right now.” 

“All?” Papyrus arches an eyebrow, picking up mugs and placing them on the table next to the sofa so that no one trips and embeds porcelain shards in their soles. Alphys doesn’t seem to have noticed him, scribbling notes in a small handheld notebook.

Sans clears his throat tiredly. “Tori, Undyne and Asgore are already in their room. We decided we’d call you if the kid woke up, but for now you needed your beauty sleep. You might have to put their Royal Majesties to bed later, Pap, so Al and I figured we’d let you sleep so you can help us out then. Should join ‘em, Pap. They could use the moral support.”

Papyrus beams. “I will do my best to ensure that the Queen and King follow the best sleeping schedule I can devise for them! Nyeh heh heh! Thank you, brother.” 

“No problem, Papyrus,” Sans says, even as his brother is already twirling out of the room. As soon as his brother’s scarf flickers around the corner and out of sight, he pulls himself back toward the table with listless arms and picks up another pencil. Beneath the wood, Alphys pats his slipper with her tail. 

Outside the window, the moon lowers its white face below the horizon. Already, birds are rousing themselves noisily from their sleep, and as the minutes pass Alphys scrubs more and more vigorously beneath her glasses. Sans tries to focus, but when he goes to slap himself awake the gesture gets lost in translation and instead he clutches at his head, groaning. “My skull,” he grumbles, refusing to let the sound squeak up into a whine. “Brain break?”

Alphys looks up from her notes and sighs, brushing a heavy hand against her cheekbone and yawning. “Brain break. Let’s compare notes in half an hour?”

Sans nods. For a couple of minutes, the only sounds in the room are the hushed conversation coming from down the hall and the muffled ticking of a clock. Al relaxes in her chair, tilting her head backward and closing her eyes against the dim light from the ceiling fan above. 

“Thanks, Al,” Sans says into the quiet. 

“What for?” Alphys refocuses her glazed eyes to look at Sans, confused. 

He shrugs. “For coming so quick, helping Frisk out. ‘s not any scientist that’ll come when someone calls ‘em in the dead of night. I dunno, this is probably coming out wrong ‘n insulting, but...” he has to crack a huge yawn, cutting off his words.

“Not really! I-I mean, anyone would’ve done it for F-Frisk!” she replies, surprised, waving her hands as if to forestall his praise. 

“Heh, but no. You’re one of a kind, always tryin’ your best to help people out.” He sits forward intently, letting his expression soften. “Thanks for being here, Al. Don’t know what we’d do without you.”

Alphys’s expression brightens, then turns more and more crimson with every word until she buries her pointed face in her hands. Even her earscales have burned bright red. “T-thank you,” she squeaks. 

“‘s the truth.” Sans pauses to lean back again in his chair, this time actively avoiding the treacherous book on diastolic blood pressure still lodged inconveniently in the carpet. He waits for the blood to rush out of her face (for some reason, Earth reptiles have blue blood, while hers is red) before continuing. 

“Al?” he asks in a subdued voice.

She looks up, still faintly flushed. “What’s wrong?” 

“You’re better at this than I am,” he starts, and stalls her protestations. “Really, you are. Instinct ‘n experience ‘n hard cold facts, you’ve got ‘em all. So I gotta ask...think the kid will get better?”

Alphys weighs her words for a moment. He watches her intently, how her gazes flickers around his face and flits from book title to book title before landing on the wall behind which Frisk lies curled up in pain. 

She weighs her words carefully. “I do think so. Frisk has an unusually high pain tolerance and their constitution is remarkable, not even to mention their determination. And besides,” she continues, voice dropping a little. “They’ve got...two really good scientists to help them out?” 

“Heh heh, you’re right.” Sans looks a bit appeased. Alphys mentally pats herself on the back.

“Ready to compare?” Alphys asks, and Sans nods. He was waiting for her to bring it back up. Confidence, he knows, comes back in baby steps. Sans uncrosses his arms from behind his head and pulls the notebook back toward him. 

He should thank Toriel for those lessons on diplomacy one day. 

“Let’s do this.” 

 

After Toriel finishes inspecting every feature on her child’s face, she can look no longer. Illness breaks through, stark, in every bead of sweat that tracks down Frisk’s face, every hoarse, rasping cough. Despite herself, despite the laugh lines ringing Frisk’s mouth and the dark of their skin, she keeps seeing Chara in Frisk’s place. Alphys notices her Queen’s distress - was she really that obvious? - and forcefully ejects Toriel from the room, asking loudly and very not-subtly for breakfast in half an hour. 

Outside the room, Toriel drops to her knees outside the room and kneels, head pressed against the wall, for several minutes. Her horns dig through the wallpaper, tearing off two small strips, but she can’t bring herself to care. Counting her breaths, Toriel allows herself ten exhalations before staggering to her feet, rolling her shoulders and fixing her posture, and striding toward her living room. 

Both Sans and Alphys look up from their books with a jolt as she enters, caught off-guard by her sudden appearance. At least, she thinks wryly, they’ve been focusing. 

She helps Sans and Alphys clear the copious volume of notes they’ve accumulated off the table to make space for breakfast. Sans seems to want to shove the books back on one of the couches in no real order. “They’re messy as is, Al,” he protests weakly, but Alphys levels him an intimidating scowl and descends on the As. Sans grumbles for a couple of minutes. Alphys gives him 120 seconds to get himself together, then gets up from where she was kneeling over the stack of B-books, brushes her hands on her lab coat, and pinches his shoulder hard. He yelps, voice jumping up to a register that should be anatomically impossible for any monster without a whistle wedged between their lungs. Then, grumbling and muttering about hyper-organized PhDs, Sans drags himself over to her pile, plops down on the carpet, and helps her sort. 

Toriel watches her work with something approaching awe. Even if Sans sticks a _Measuring Heart Rate_ between V and W every once in a while, his change in demeanor undoubtedly had something do with Alphys’s fearsome glower. Toriel had no idea that Alphys could be scary. 

Toriel cracks a few eggs over the frying pan and pulls a steak out of her Heat Fridge, then remembers the sheer number of people residing in her house this morning and adds to the counter ten more eggs, another steak, some snail pie slices and a couple of crab apples, three cups of sea tea and some spider donuts she’d bought off Muffet’s bake sale a couple of weeks ago. 

Slowly, at the smell of the scrambling eggs and steak, everyone gathers into the kitchen. Toriel brings the eggs and donuts to the table, picking a tarantula off the topmost donut and releasing it gently onto her floor. It hands her 1G. 

Undyne takes it upon herself to drag her girlfriend away from the 26 forming stacks of books and lead the meeting, wielding a cup of sea tea like a gavel.

“First order of business!” says Undyne, slamming a piece of paper on the table. The pencil she’s holding in her hand splinters, and she gestures at Alphys for another one, who pulls a pen, three times the regular thickness, out of one of the lab pockets lining the lapels of her coat. “Schedule!” Undyne announces. “We gotta keep watch over the kid while they’re sleeping in case something goes wrong. If it does, we dial Alphys.”

“Ooh! Ooh! Pick me!” Papyrus waves his gloved hand eagerly in the air like a orange-and-red layered flag. “I volunteer for the first three watches! I am well-rested and perfect for the job!”

Without batting an eye at Papyrus’s enthusiasm so early in the morning, Undyne scrawls a large letter P over the first three time slots. The nib of Alphys’s pen tears through the paper and bleeds onto the wood, but the marks are still legible so she doesn’t bother to rewrite. “Okay, Papyrus first. Next?”

“I volunteer,” Asgore rumbles. Undyne starts to write “His Ro-” before striking through that and just sketching in an A. Then, with a glance at Alphys, she writes AD. 

“M-me next,” stutters Alphys, nibbling on a spider donut and picking feelers out of the icing. 

“Absolutely not,” Toriel counters. “Doctor, you need your rest. I will take that watch when I return from school.” 

Alphys scrunches up her face in Undyne’s general direction, not daring to pull a face at Toriel. Then she freezes. 

“W-wait a second,” Alphys says, looking thoughtful. “H-humans are more used to treating h-human diseases, couldn’t we just...send them to a hospital? A human hospital? I-I know there are some in the c-city...” she looks appealingly around the room.

Asgore takes up her cause with a nod of his head. “I have several contacts at the hospital nearest to us. I am confident that they would be happy to assist the human ambassador.” 

“That would not be a good idea,” Toriel intervenes. She folds her hands on the table. Her expression is tightly controlled. 

“Huh? Why not?” Undyne asks. 

“Simply put, I do not trust humanity with my child. I made an exception for this conference, but will not do so again with their life directly on the line.” 

“What, you think they’re gonna get offed in a _hospital_? I thought those were for, y’know, saving people.” 

“That is one of my concerns, yes.” 

“It can’t be _that_ bad, we can send people to watch over ‘em while the white coats poke ‘em with needles or whatever.” 

“It is not necessarily the doctors there with whom I am preoccupied,” Toriel continues as if Undyne hadn’t spoken - though her eyes slit a little more, sparking with restrained fire, and pointedly don’t turn in Undyne’s direction. “Several weeks ago, Frisk approached me, hyperventilating. It seems the humans have taken their fear and anger toward monsters out on them. Their inbox - their spam folder, fortunately, thank you, Alphys - “ she nods toward Alphys “ - has been inundated with a series of alarming emails. Most of which threaten them directly. Several, however, described various...creative methods of causing harm. Primarily to Papyrus, Asgore and myself. These emails caused them significant distress.”

Papyrus looks up from his eggs to stare at Toriel with wide, confused eyes. Asgore’s whole face droops. 

“I believe that, if we sent Frisk to a human hospital, we would endanger not only their life but the lives of the humans there.” Toriel’s lips are tight, and her expression resembles the one she wore when she stormed, furious, out of Asgore’s castle, the day he killed the first human. “We cannot trust Frisk with the general human populace yet. I _will not_ trust my child with them. Besides, with the great Dr. Alphys on our side, Frisk is already in able and trustworthy hands.”

Alphys smiles nervously, shakily readjusting her glasses on her face, alarmed by the steel in Toriel’s words. “Y-yeah! We can do it, Toriel! D-don’t worry. I’ll fix up Frisk as good as new.” 

“Fine,” Undyne concedes, shrugging. “But more importantly! Let’s track down those humans and beat ‘em up!” she exclaims furiously, pounding her fist against the table. “No one threatens our Frisk and gets away with it!”

Asgore delicately uncurls his fist and lays a giant hand on Undyne’s shoulder. “Undyne.” 

Undyne falters, letting her fist stutter to a halt over the splintering wood. “What,” she asks flatly. 

“What would happen if we were to kill a human in response to a preemptive threat?”

“We’d be making a statement!” Undyne swells up. Asgore arches an eyebrow, and she deflates. “They’d be pretty mad, I guess,” she mutters, lips twitching up in a snarl. 

Asgore beams at her, then turns to address the room. “We cannot lash out at the humans for a series of emails. Truthfully, I have been receiving these as well,” he shares. He pats Undyne’s shoulder once, then reclaims his hands. “But unless they stand out, I delete them. I believe that is the best course of action. We do not want to further inflame any existing tensions.”

Undyne stares angrily at the table, as if the humans were the wood beneath her arms and she could incinerate the threat to Frisk with her glare alone. The table groans as she presses against the wood with her hands. Across the table, Papyrus’s eyes are troubled. 

“Hey, Tori.” As he speaks up for the first time, Sans’s voice is hard. He’s got his hood pulled completely over his head and a half-empty plate of steak clenched in his hands. “Mind if I take a little peek at those emails?”

To his surprise, Toriel snorts at his request, shaking her head at some odd source of mirth. “I am sorry, Sans. But Frisk requested that no one see them. In fact, they mentioned you specifically.” 

Sans shakes his head and mutters something under his breath, sinking lower. 

Papyrus watches their exchange with shadowed eyes, then speaks with a tone quieter than normal. “I will take the first watches. But before I do, all of you need sleep! You especially, Dr. Alphys! And I can’t _believe_ I’m saying this, brother, but you need to take a nap. Your eyes look terrible, and you’re emitting even more slime than normal!”

He twirls away from the table, cackling down the hallway. Sans sighs, watching him go, then gets up wordlessly and appropriates half the couch. 

Undyne watches Papyrus leave over her shoulder, and the second he disappears from view she stands up abruptly, letting her chair clatter to the ground behind her. She stalks over to the hallway and she sits outside Frisk’s door, burning a hole in the door with her eye. Alphys quietly excuses herself, neatly pushes in both her chair and Undyne’s, and patters over to where Undyne sits rigid. She carefully sets her head on Undyne’s shoulder. As Toriel continues observing, Undyne slowly relaxes one shoulder, just enough so that Alphys won’t crick her neck.

With a sigh, Asgore rumbles “Thank you, Toriel.” Then, without waiting for or expecting a response, he slides his chair back into the table and rests his back against the wall by the sofa. 

Toriel gracefully sits herself on the chair by the sofa, and eyes Sans’s slumped back on the couch. For a couple of minutes, she sits and lets her mind rest. 

Then she remembers his startling proficiency from earlier. “Where did you learn to do that?” she asks. 

The only indication that Sans heard her is the click of an eyelid popping open. “Learn what?”

“Diagnosis, medical experience. When did you work with Alphys?” 

“Eh, back when I was young and idealistic,” he waves an airy hand in the air.

“You looked quite experienced,” she persists. He shrugs and opens the other eye, grinning easily at her. 

“You’d be surprised what you can pick up from a couple of good books. And Al’s a good study buddy.” 

“I think that you are not disclosing the whole story. You claim that you had no formal training whatsoever?” she asks curiously.

“Eh, you got me. I had a teacher, way back when. But he’s long gone now, so no use.” 

“Gone?”

“Dead.” 

“Oh,” Toriel replies, momentarily placated. “I am sorry for your loss.” 

“No sweat,” Sans replies easily, sitting up a bit and locking his eyes over her shoulder. “It was a long time ago. I’ve practically forgotten him by now, anyway.” 

For some reason, as he says those words his eyes flicker yellow, but the change in color happens so quickly Toriel half-believes she imagined it. She brushes it off and continues, albeit more hesitantly. “But, you and Alphys...?” 

“Yeah, we worked together under that guy.” 

“Doing what?”

“State secret,” he winks, and sets his hands over his eyes. 

She raises an eyebrow at him impatiently. “I was Queen,” she reminds him drily. He just shakes his head. “Why will you not share?” 

“Don’t want to.” 

She studies his expression intently. As if he can sense her scrutiny, he readjusts his hand over his forehead. With a shake of her head, she asks “Seriously, Sans. What is wrong?” 

“Look, ‘s nothing you gotta _pressure_ yourself about.” 

Toriel frowns. That sounded like a pun...?

“Blood pressure,” Sans explains. “Medicine pun, never mind.” 

“But there is something upsetting you?” 

“Nothing too bad,” he deflects, then continues hastily before she can ask anything else. “But it looks like there was something upsetting you.” 

Toriel starts, then hurriedly rearranges her expression. She smoothes her dress, crosses her legs, and betrays herself with a glance toward Frisk’s room. Alphys practically had to drag her from Frisk’s bedside, so intent was Toriel on staying put by her child. “There is nothing upsetting me,” she says quietly. 

Both of Sans’s eyebrows arch off his skull. “You looked pretty upset when I first came over.” 

“I was concerned for my child, nothing more.” 

Sans sits up completely, looking askance at her face. “I was concerned about your kid too. Al didn’t have to bodily remove me from the room.” 

“Perhaps you were less attached because you have not lost the same as I have,” Toriel replies icily, bottled-up temper flaring.

“Heh, maybe not,” Sans grins, a slippery grin with hooks in the edges that threaten to tear apart his jaw. “But that means you had something you lost. Somethin’ that’s botherin’ you now.” 

“Why do you want to know?” 

“Because it’s hurtin’ you, Tori.” 

Toriel draws in a deep breath and exhales it slowly. “I lied. It is...not nothing.”

“So I guessed. Can I help?”

“No. You...you cannot bring my children back,” she tells him quietly, gaze directed toward her knees. 

Wires click together in Sans’s brain. “Ah, the little kiddos,” he guesses evenly. When he was much, much younger, he’d heard about the King and Queen’s children. At that point in time, they’d attained the status of rose-tinted legend, falling on beds of flowers and dying for each other. Now that he’s met one of the protagonists personally, Sans can’t help but doubt that her kid would ever do something quite so selfless and noble. His grin grows wider as he pushes thoughts of demons coated in dust and golden petals out of his head. “I’m...’m sorry about that.”

“It is not your fault,” Toriel reassures him from behind clenched fists. “Frisk reminds me much of my children, from so long ago. The first...fell ill, like this, before they passed.” 

“I’m sorry,” Sans repeats, feeling the lack of something more useful to say weigh on him like ivy tensing over his chest. 

Toriel graces him with a smile regardless. “Again, the fault is not yours. I miss them very much,” she acknowledges with a dipped head, “but...I must learn that Frisk is not the child I lost.”

Sans looks at her for a long moment, taking in the crease in her eyes and the grief in her voice. Then, deliberately, he raises both hands beneath an easygoing grin. “You, needin’ to learn something? I think you’re perfect already.” 

Toriel looks at him askance, an odd grin spreading over her face. He counts it as a small victory. “Do not praise me overmuch,” she warns, “or my head will swell.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Sans looks at her strangely. “Was that -”

“Yes it was.” 

“Do you even science.”

“No, but I can try.” 

“Tori, I can honestly say that was one of the worst puns I’ve ever heard.” 

Some of the clouds clear from her irises as she throws her head back and laughs. “What a generous compliment.”

“What can I say, you make it easy.” 

 

Papyrus eyes Frisk’s book collection. The books on their shelf focus primarily on, well, everything from botany and algebra. He even sees a small quantum physics book on their shelf (it looks familiar...?). There is nothing appropriate for reading a child to sleep here! He has never heard of a child falling asleep to quadratics! He would be a terrible quasi-big brother if he read to Frisk about _Typhae_ and polynomial expansions!

Fortunately, the great Papryus is well-versed in interesting stories! He reaches into his skull to pull out some fond memories. “There is a distinct lack of bunny on your bookshelf, human,” he begins, tutting his tongue at the dearth of white furred mammal on their shelf. Even that Annoying Dog is nowhere to be seen. How lucky that they live in a canine-free habitat! “Fortunately for you, I, the great Papyrus, know some cool tales from my life that are sure to fascinate you! We will start with some tales of snow because you are overheating and thoughts of icy snow are sure to cool you off.

“It was a dark and windy night.” Papyrus clears his nonexistent throat, seating himself on the chair formerly reserved for Toriel. “Did you know that one of your famous human authors wrote that? Except Snowdin is always bright, and Waterfall gets wind, not Snowdin. So it was actually bright and calm. But for the sake of storytelling, human, imagine that Snowdin was dark and windy!

“Undyne came over that afternoon - no, that dark and windy night - to help me train to be even more spectacular than I already am. Then, while we were sparring, she told me that she picked up a human magazine at the trash dump that advertised surfing, and that one day she wanted to go surfing on the beach above ground. In fact, our Undyne - the one on the surface, not in the story - still needs to go surfing! We have plans later this month, human, so when you get better we can all surf together.”

Papyrus shakes his head, like a dog ridding its fur of persistent water. “Anyway. Back to the Undyne in my story, the younger and less old one than the one you know now! She always makes conversation with me when we spar. She says it trains me to not let my opponents distract me during combat, but it would be rude to ignore her so I always respond anyway. Nyeh heh heh!

“But then I had a brilliant idea. We decided to try surfing on the Ice Wolf’s cubes. We boarded the ice cubes with astounding grace that you would not believe! Undyne was very good at it, because she is good at everything she does. She did not fall off once. Maybe because she has sticky webbing on her feet. My boots are less than adept with friction, so I nearly slid off!

“We surfed down the river a very long time. Undyne used this opportunity as training as well. She would launch spears in my direction, and I would have to dodge. I fell off. Several times. But I was never hit!

“Then, the ice cubes slid onto a conveyer belt. There was steam everywhere. And lots of platforms with flashing arrows on them. Undyne looked very uncomfortable, and very sweaty. She even threw up, four times! It was remarkable, human, because Undyne never shows weakness. But that strange place did not agree with her. 

“In the end, the belts ferried the ice cubes over a precipitous drop that would have sent us both plummeting into magma. Fortunately, I, the great Papyrus, saw the danger! I grabbed Undyne with both of my gloves and dragged her back along the conveyer belt. It is a good thing skeletons do not have muscles to maintain, human. Or else I would not have been able to run the whole way back to the water. Thankfully, when we jumped off the conveyer belt and into the cool water of Waterfall, Undyne was feeling much better, and helped me swim back to shore! For you see, human, bones are not very buoyant. When I regaled Sans with this story, he was very upset with me. I do not understand why. It is not like he could have done better in that situation. He certainly could not have run for so long! I, the finely-muscled Jog Boy, ran for nearly nine! It is hard to make forward progress on those conveyors...”

Papyrus takes a breath. It’s the first one he’s taken since he started speaking. 

Frisk’s face hasn’t changed an inch. Their eyes are still red-ringed and puffy, and sweat beads across their forehead. They look utterly unresponsive. But he is positive that, somewhere within the human, they are listening! He can feel it!

“Human, I do not know what is happening between you and my brother,” he starts. Then he crosses his eyes and looks at his own lips, surprised. Papyrus had not quite meant to say that out loud. He frowns at his nose, pinning the words on that particular cavity in his face, then shrugs and continues. “But I approve. I think it is helping you both. You two are very good friends. But sometimes my brother worries me, human. It is strange. He sleeps so much, but he looks so tired.”

Papyrus sighs and wrings his hands. “Sans would tell me that I worry too much. And maybe I do. But I do not know how I can help! He doesn’t...he doesn’t really want to tell me anything. I think he believes he is protecting me, but I would like to help. I am not still a young baby bones!” Papyrus smiles softly at the indignation in his own tone, and stamps his foot on the ground in a muted mimicry of his younger childish outbursts. “I know my brother loves me. That’s...probably why he’s keeping things from me. But, human...I miss him. He is so sad when he wakes up sometimes. And then...he will come in and give me a hug, in the middle of the night, for no reason. I worry about him. Even though he is older than I am.” 

He looks at Frisk and, for no reason in particular, grabs their hand and squeezes it. “I know there is not much you can do about this. My brother can be quite stubborn when he wants to. Even if he is stubborn about being a lazy bones. And about slacking off on all of his jobs! Even though I still don’t know how he got that many jobs! But...thank you for listening, human. I know that somewhere, you can hear me.”

Papyrus lets go of Frisk’s hand. Their face remains immobile, but he retains his confidence in them. He brushes some of the hair away from their face, pats their forehead, adjusts the rag on their scalp. He hopes they’re comfortable, in whatever dreamland they find themself. 

“And now, for your patience, I will reward you with a story about my brother and Grillby! Several years ago, when my brother was much smaller - in age, not in size, he has not grown an inch for many years - he challenged Grillby to a snowball fight. I believe he thought he was being clever. But let me tell you, human, when Grillby stepped outside the bar, Sans got such a faceful of snow that you would not believe! Not a single one of Sans’s snowballs hit Grillby. That is probably for the better, because Grillby is made of fire...” he trails off, thinking, then resumes eagerly. 

He is so wrapped up in his storytelling - after the vignette about Sans, he tells them about the first time he visited Undyne’s house, and how he found the dummy with a picture of a Mew Mew Kissy Cutie 2 poster that she was going to give to Alphys, as motivation - that he doesn’t realize when his three hours are up. 

Asgore pokes his head in the room promptly at the 3-hour mark and waves Papyrus out. He bounds out of the room to cook some world-class spaghetti. 

 

(A voice in Frisk’s mind snarls _dirty brother killer_.)


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Frisk has another nightmare. Those are getting more and more frequent. There's no way that could possibly mean anything bad.

“I see that Papyrus spent good time occupying you with stories, my child.” Asgore walks around the room, poking at the various books lining their bookshelf. “And with such a dearth of storytelling novels, I am impressed. I see - physics, my child? Astounding. And of course, gardening. I am glad you have taken such a shine to botany, young one.” 

He crosses to Frisk’s toybox. The toys...still don’t interest the child at all. “Perhaps we should replace those,” he muses to himself. “Those toys, I mean. Perhaps we could find ones that suit you better?” 

Asgore pokes around the room for a couple of minutes, pausing for a moment to indulge himself, looking out the window at the village surrounding their house, before joining them at their bedside. He removes the robe from his back and gently drapes it around the back of the chair, letting the royal purple fabric fold and sway behind him. 

He turns to Frisk and places one giant palm on their forehead. “You feel only hotter,” he sighs. “Perhaps some more stories will aid your condition? I am afraid I do not have a large variety that would interest you from my tenure as king, as my paperwork often bores even me. And even the amusing stories from dealing with various, er, officials usually involve yourself. You make my work much more bearable.”

Asgore’s eyes flit around the room, searching for inspiration, over the bookshelves and the closet with a haphazard pile of clothes at the bottom. Nothing strikes him until he notices a paper face-up on the desk. 

Curious, he picks himself up from his seat and lifts up the paper. “What’s this?” he asks the unresponsive child. He studies the drawing more intently. “A family tree?” he blurts as soon as he recognizes it. 

At the bottom of the drawing, Frisk’s name is written - _Frisk!!_ \- and then there are two lines, conventional mother-and-father style, connecting Frisk with _Mom_ and _Dad_. Next to the names, Frisk’s unsteady-but-improving hand stencilled in a rough sketch of their faces. Truly, Asgore is only recognizable by his horns, he notes with amusement. Below, Frisk has written a memo to themself - _toriel started crying when I called her mom the first time so I think she liked it! and asgore just looked really happy and called me my child for the first time which I really liked so i’m going to keep doing it!_

Asgore remembers the first time Frisk called him Dad, a couple days after they had reached the surface. There was no special occasion - in fact, he recalls, Frisk was reaching for a glass of milk, which Toriel had accidentally placed out of their reach. Frisk called to him “Dad, can you grab the milk for me?” 

He has to pause to wipe his face. Then he has to put down the paper to avoid getting it wet. Truly, he had never let himself hope - that he could have a family again...

After a few moments, he pulls his expression back under control, and takes the drawing with him when he sits back by Frisk’s bedside, smiling. “This is lovely, Frisk.” He traces the lines from Frisk to _big brother (sans)_ and _big brother (the great papyrus!)_ , the first with a rather squashed depiction of a skull and the other a scribbled-on elongated skull that was replaced with a traced picture of a plate of spaghetti. There’s a note below Papyrus’s head, which was: _sorry Papyrus! not great at drawing skulls yet so I drew something you loved! I didn’t think sans would care though, I’m not sorry sans_. There’s a depiction of Frisk sticking out their tongue affixed to the end of this note. 

Then he lets his eyes slide to Alphys’s face, which truthfully looks more like a scaly triangle than a face, and Undyne’s head, which has two spears crisscrossed behind it and a green heart coming from her hair. The lines read _big sister aunt (undyne)_ and _big sister aunt (alphys)_. Next to their portraits is a depiction of a cartoon cat-thing. 

For longer than strictly necessary he casts his eyes happily over the whole paper, trying to memorize every detail, every imperfection where their lines could be straight. Then, when the tide of emotion ebbs sufficiently, he folds the paper neatly and replaces it on their desk. 

“I am touched,” he says quietly. “And I wish that I were so proficient a storyteller as Papyrus. But know that your family loves you, Frisk. Wherever you are, we will wait for you until you come back.”

 

( _The suicide king, the king you killed -_ )

 

A shudder wracks Frisk’s frame. Asgore looks at them intently, catching the tail end of the sudden movement. He steps to their side as they still, hands raised awkwardly and prepared to soothe their fears. Then, without warning, Frisk screams. 

“Help!” they wail. Asgore jolts forward, surprised. “Help, please...help me, help them, please....” 

Their eyes snap open wide, and they shudder in their bed, clutching uselessly at their sheets. The child’s pleas tear at Asgore’s heart unbearably. Asgore rests a hand on Frisk’s shoulder, wishing he could soothe them with his touch. “It is all right, my child, it will all be all right. Focus on my voice, you are safe - ”

Footsteps thump down the hall, approaching rapidly as Frisk’s panic only seems to mount. The sounds stop as Toriel throws open the door and pauses in the doorframe. It nearly shatters off its hinges. Undyne and Alphys peer around her, trying to see Frisk. 

“Frisk?” Toriel gasps, hurrying inside the room. Undyne and Alphys stand next to Asgore, who had backed away from the side of the bed to make room for Toriel.

“Toriel?” Frisk croaks, eyes still wide and unseeing. “Toriel, Mom...I’m so sorry, Mom, I’m so sorry, I didn’t...I didn’t mean to...you’re...”

“Frisk, it is fine! I am fine, we are all well. Please, child, what is wrong?” 

They bury their face in their hands and tighten around themself, and continue to bawl as if they can’t hear her. They grip their hair, yanking at fistfuls, trying to rip it away from their scalp. Toriel stares at Frisk in horror. “Please, my child, stop - you are hurting yourself!”

Again, Frisk doesn’t appear to hear her, they just keep screaming. Their shoulders shake convulsively and they’re still babbling apologies, letting their words blur together indistinguishably. 

With shaking hands, Toriel pulls out her phone and hits the first speed dial. The phone rings and goes to voicemail. She opens the phone and tries again, this time hitting the fourth, and connection is established on the second ring. 

“Papyrus, please bring your brother,” she says, fully aware that the sound of Frisk’s screaming is clearly audible through the receiver. He responds with something hard to make out, but Toriel has already disconnected the call and runs her hands over her child’s forehead with trembling hands. 

Within seconds there’s pattering of two sets of feet before Sans throws the doors open, Papyrus right on his heels. They need less than two seconds to process the scene. As the brothers step into the doorway, Sans reacts with remarkable alacrity, literally vaulting over the bedpost to land by the kid’s feet. 

“Oh no,” says Papyrus, clapping both hands to his face. He looks at Undyne, who looks back at him, helpless. “What happened?”

“We dunno,” she shrugs. “We just got in here after Toriel and they were...” she gestures vaguely. “Screaming.” 

When Sans speaks, his voice is gentle. “Kid. Frisk. ‘s all right, buddo. Everyone’s here, it wasn’t...’s not your fault, Frisk.”

Finally, Frisk stops screaming, and takes deep, shuddering breaths. They ask “Sans?” in a really quiet voice, then chokes back another sob, this one even more devastating than the first. “Sans - Sans, I’m sorry, I didn’t...I didn’t mean to, it wasn’t me...”

“I know, Frisk. Hey, look at me. It wasn’t you, kiddo, wasn’t your fault. Deep breaths. Come on, in and out. In and out. ’s the spirit.”

Frisk uncurls a little bit. But their eyes are still stuck together, jammed with tears. It’s a thoroughly unattractive sight. Beside them, Toriel twitches forward, as if to snatch them up for a hug, but stops and gives Frisk personal space. 

Their wiry shoulders rise and fall with deep, gasping breaths. They clench and unclench their tiny fists convulsively, scrubbing their hands across their face. Everyone maintains a respectful distance from the kid - at least, until Frisk picks themself up and launches themself at Sans, who just barely spreads his arms in time for a hug. He’s nearly bowled over. 

Then they whisper “Where’s Mom?” right next to Sans’s ear, they must not know who is in the room. Toriel reaches out and wraps her arms around both Sans and Frisk, burying her muzzle in Frisk’s frizzy hair. 

“Mom?” Frisk asks, voice higher-pitched, and Toriel goes “I am here” in a really soft, tiny voice, and Frisk detaches themself from Sans to wrap their arms around Toriel’s robe and clutch tightly. Sans sits back on the bed. He will eat his own jacket lining if the kid is seeing what’s actually happening as opposed to some crazy memory. 

Toriel rocks them back and forth slightly, closing her eyes and moving in slow, practiced motions. Despite the crowd, she starts to hum, a single low note that reverberates through her chest and Frisk’s. 

Slowly, watching her as if dreaming, Asgore approaches Toriel and wraps one huge arm around Frisk’s shoulders, careful not to brush against Toriel’s hand. She doesn’t seem to notice that he’s there. 

A few seconds trickle by before he joins her in his soothing baritone, the same note several octaves down. The sound echoes around the room, glinting off the window and the respectful silence of the rest of the room, deep and powerful enough to sink into their bones.As they hum, Frisk’s breathing starts to even, gradually, in time with Toriel’s swaying. 

For a long time, no one says anything. The room collectively lets the melody glide around their heads, and even Undyne catches herself letting her head list to one side as she listens. Finally, Asgore and Toriel appear to reach the end of their song, and stop. 

“Group hug!” Papyrus exclaims immediately, and launches himself at half-speed into Toriel’s side, pressing one glove into Frisk’s side. Next to him, Undyne grins a huge, relieved grin that stretches up to her earfins, and slides around Papyrus. 

“Kid’s lucky I’m not in a flattery suplex-ing mood!” she exclaims, and if her voice is quieter than usual it’s certainly not because she’s worried sick about the human. Alphys is too short to reach any additional part of Frisk, so she grabs Frisk’s ankle with her tail and presses her face between Undyne and Asgore’s sides. 

Frisk is breathing easier but still visibly distressed. When they speak, their voice is tightly modulated, as if one wrong word will cause them to break down again. “T-thank you,” they stutter, their childish voice unusually heavy. Sometimes Sans forgets how young they are. “I’m sorry for...for scaring you,” they whisper. 

Sans knows that’s not actually what they are apologizing for. 

He catches Toriel’s eye, and she breaks from her reverie to see him jerk his head and his eyes toward the door. Bless her, she catches his meaning, and gives him a slow, humorless wink. “All right, enough. Let us give Frisk some space. I am sure they will appreciate our company later, but for now, they must rest.”

With no small reluctance - “we just got the kid back, Tori! I wanna talk to them again, it’s been wayy too long!!” - Toriel ushers everyone out the door, and shuts it with a quiet click. 

Frisk doesn’t look at Sans. His jacket hangs loosely around their shoulders and only highlights the contrast underneath their eyelids. He’s really hesitant to make them talk about anything they don’t want to, so he starts gently. “What’s up, kiddo?” 

Apparently, that’s all they really need to start bawling again. At this rate, they’re going to dehydrate themself and get a nasty headache, but he’ll worry himself over a glass of water later. 

“I felt - I saw - I saw myself do it again,” they blurt desperately, looking at Sans beseechingly. “P-papyrus and Undyne and, and M-mom, and you, S-sans, everyone...and I think they were in here talking to me but I couldn’t t-tell because their b-bodies kept...I tried to hold Mom together...I k-kept seeing everyone in their dust, and then Ch-chara was there, and they told me...that I was doing good...and I did, I j-just k-kept doing and I couldn’t stop myself....”

They curl into a ball again. Sans moves toward the kid until he’s close enough to lay a hand on their shoulder. When they don’t flinch away, he pulls them toward him so that they’re resting against his shoulder. 

Frisk takes a deep, shuddering breath and continues talking, desperation roaring out of them faster than garbage out of Waterfall. “I s-saw Papyrus and h-he told me that he still believed in me and I felt really bad, because I k-knew that I d-didn’t deserve it, and t-then I fought Undyne and she was sad because s-she just wants to protect everyone, from me, and she was the true h-hero, she was the one t-that everyone looked up to. T-to protect them from me, Sans...I don’t know...how could I have been that person? The one t-that killed everyone? I...I...I’m terrible,” they say, and before Sans can interject they keep going “and then I killed...I killed you and I _laughed_ because I just wanted to kill everyone and you were...really hard to fight, and I c-can’t, I’m so s-sorry, Sans, I can’t...”

Finally, they run out of words, and they just melt down and cry. Sans wraps both of his arms around Frisk and rests his head on their hair, and lets them bawl all over his shirt and his jacket. He runs his hands through their hair, the way they like, and lets them cry.

When their tear ducts are all dried up, they whisper “I dreamt about them.” 

Sans freezes, making them squirm uncomfortably for a couple of moments before he forces himself to relax. “Whaddya mean, kid?”

“I actually saw them. I saw Chara. They were standing right in front of me.” Frisk turns tear-stained eyes imploringly toward Sans. “I could actually see them. They...they’re scary, Sans. I don’t like them. I don’t think they have a Soul. I don’t think they love anyone.”

Sans grins a humorless, stone grin. “Gotta agree with you there, kid. But see, that’s how you’re different!” 

He pokes Frisk in the stomach. Despite themself, they let out a quiet giggle. “That tickles,” they protest weakly.

“I know.”

Frisk pulls his jacket closer around their shoulders and uses the hood to cover up their face. “But how am I different? I mean, that was m-me, even though I w-wasn’t...”

“The one in control? That makes all the difference. It’s ‘cause you, Frisk, you love everyone. And you got all these monsters that love you. All these monsters that aren’t ever gonna go anywhere, aren’t gonna let anything happen to you. We’re always gonna be right here,” he says, poking their chest, right where he knows their heart beats strongly in their chest. Despite themself, they giggle again and swat at his finger. 

Frisk’s eyes are still red and watery, and their head is going to start hurting soon. But the hope and determination filters back into their eyes.

The lullaby Sans sings then is vaguely familiar to Frisk. His voice is deep, not quite as low as Asgore’s but deep enough to soothe their bones. The melody is slow and cheerful at the same time, a quiet song that fills them with hope. They remember the echo garden, the echo flower that whispered to them this lullaby, in Sans’s deep, comforting voice. In this moment, they let the song wrap around them like a second blanket. 

They fall asleep content. 

 

( _oh but you killed him too_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, you got me, I'm a sucker for protective Sans, what else is new?


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Frisk enjoys some well-deserved time with their family and the last of Chekhov's Armory is assembled.

Papyrus scrapes the blackened spaghetti off of the oventop, humming a quiet little tune, and pokes at the snapped strands on the ceiling until they relinquish their hold on the white paint. With practiced movements, he sweeps the raw pasta noodles, which lie in sad crumpled piles scattered around the counter, and dump them in the trash. He dusts his hands off and sets around to boxing up the pasta he and Undyne prepared to pass the time before their watch. He leaves three generous servings for Toriel, affixing a sticky note with the inscription “I HOPE THAT THIS MAKES THE YOUNG HUMAN FEEL BETTER!”, and shuffling the eleven pies in her refrigerator to make space. 

He steps away from the refrigerator and casts a critical eye around the kitchen. Satisfied that everything is spotless - oh, he forgot to put away the granite cleaner, there we go - he nods to himself and sets out to collect his brother.

In the living room he waves a silent hello at Toriel, who stares sleeplessly at the wall. She jolts awake for long enough to give him a strained smile before returning to scrutinizing the wallpaper intensely. Papyrus looks over his shoulder, where her gaze lands. The wall’s not that interesting...? 

He shrugs and picks up his brother. Alphys is sleeping on the couch, curled in the half not previously occupied by Sans, and Undyne is slumped over the top of the couch, limbs splayed carelessly over the crest of the couch cushions. One of her legs dangles precariously over the back of the couch. Papyrus thinks about moving it for her - the Boogeybone might snatch it from her if he doesn’t, he’s nefarious for taking limbs from unsuspecting baby bones and hiding them around the house - but he’s more than confident Undyne can handle herself, because she’s amazing! And besides, it might be better if she gets him, so that he’ll stop scaring all the terrified little baby bones and their brothers trying to make them be quiet and stop fidgeting until the nightmares outside pass.

Papyrus carries his brother over his shoulder out the door, departing with a quiet “nyeh heh heh!” as a goodbye. He walks as evenly as he can, trying not to jolt Sans awake, and deposits him tenderly on the couch, looking around for a blanket with which Papyrus could tuck him in. He knows Sans will wake soon - his brother does not like rapid changes in scenery for some reason, unless he controls them with his weird time-space shenanigans - so he stays nearby. 

To pass the time, Papyrus pulls out some of his old drawings - he’d been designing his own line of pasta, so of course he needs a logo! - and sets to working on it, using a rolling pin as a straightedge. He hits a mental block and taps his teeth with a pen, hearing the sound _clink-clink-clink_ around the space, then dives into the pantry to pull out existing brands for inspiration. They’re all so brightly colored! He opens a jar of tomato sauce and dabs some on his design, pleased at the bright red border he’s laid around the edges of his drawing. 

Just as he caps the tomato sauce, small sounds of uneven breathing come from the living room. They make him pause, then hastily deposit the pin on the counter, hardly remembering to shut the refrigerator door as he leaves the kitchen. When he glances into the living room, he breathes a sigh of relief, because his brother is still on the couch. He’s waking up. Papyrus crosses the room to the couch and sits himself gently by his brother’s head.

“Brother?” he asks, cocking his head. Yep, Sans’s consciousness is definitely stirring. Then he frowns, worried. Sans looks just as tired as he had before Frisk had their nightmare! Come to think of it...when was the last time Sans slept? Can Papyrus even really be sure he is sleeping? The thought makes worry shoot through his bones, and he comes to a snap resolution.

“Heya,” his brother says tiredly, cracking an eye open. It looks like a monumental effort. “Howzit going?” 

“It goes well, Sans,” he responds, then reconsiders his words and tries again, this time with honesty. “Actually, it does not look like it goes well at all. How are you feeling?”

“Bone-tired,” Sans jokes, cracking a half-hearted grin. He grabs his arm and stretches, sighing in relief as one of his joints crack. At least, Papyrus thinks it’s a joint. He didn’t think skeletons hand joints, but he also didn’t think that they oozed slime or ate ketchup, so he’s willing to suspend his own disbelief. “Oh man, I should be helpin’ Alphys.” 

Papyrus shakes his head and sits himself next to his brother. Nervously, he clacks his hands together, and entirely without conscious approval his leg starts bouncing against the edge of the couch. Sans pulls himself into a sitting position to make room for Papyrus and eyes his shaking knee with a raised eyebrow. “You feelin’ all right there, Pap?” 

“I need to talk to you,” Papyrus says. Sans sits up all the way, back arched against the couch tensely. 

Sans looks at him for a long moment. “Uh, sure. What’s up?” he prompts, after an awkward silence. 

“You have not been sleeping well,” he observes, clasping his hands and wringing them together.

Sans blinks. “What can I say? Sure, I don’t sleep as many hours durin’ the night, but hey. Sleeping during the day in- _sol_ -ates me from all that starlight wakin’ me up.” His wink is half-hearted. 

Papyrus, Sans sees, doesn’t react to the pun at all. Sans fights the urge to wince. He studies his brother’s face and finds nothing but tight apprehension and overwhelming concern. Mentally, Sans steels himself for another difficult conversation. Maybe he could just hop on outside and dodge it altogether - no, Papyrus would just bring it up later. Papyrus is like a dam - he’ll hold things in until something shoves him over, then all of his worries come spilling out until they find relief, another reservoir. Which would be Sans. “Sans, please...your nightmares are growing more and more frequent, and you are not sleeping as well. And now the human... Well. Is there...would you like to talk about it?” 

Sans tries to hide the way his hands fist inside of his pockets suddenly, but Papyrus catches the motion. The tiredness, the bags under Sans’s eyes and the cut of his eyelids hanging low, seem more obvious than ever. “‘s fine,” Sans dismisses quietly, leaning his head to one side. The joviality is conspicuously absent from his voice. If he just cuts this conversation off now, maybe Pap can hold out until he’s feeling better -

“Sans...” Papyrus begins, leaning forward a bit. Instead of meeting his eyes, Sans traces his eyes over the fibers of the carpet. The carpet was recently vacuumed, but not by Sans’s hands. “Brother. You can hardly sleep through the night any more. What is wrong?” 

“Nothing’s wrong, Pap. We made it all the way out of the Underground, remember? We’re all safe now,” Sans tells him, leaning forward with a twisted smile to pap Papyrus’s shoulder. 

Papyrus grabs his brother’s hand and places it in front of him, in between their laps, and looks his brother dead in the eye until Sans looks away. “Even when you join me in my room, even when the human accompanies you you still...you do not sleep well. It is not as bad, true, when we are there, but...still. Something changed, Sans, and I..I know you are hiding it from me. When you were a baby bones, things were so different.”

“That’s because I’m not a baby bones any more. And nothing’s wrong, I’m just growin’ on up. ‘s about time, isn’t it?” Sans grins humorlessly. Papyrus always did nag him about growing up, being more mature, taking on responsibility. 

“Please, brother,” Papyrus begs, his voice cracking. He leans forward, inches away from brushing his forehead against Sans’s. He continues speaking, trying to catch his brother’s eyes. “Please. Tell me what happened.”

Sans can’t make eye contact and shrinks away from his brother’s desperate words, too tired to muster a convincing defense. “There’s nothing wrong, Papyrus,” Sans responds, and even as he speaks he winces at his own weak words. 

Disappointment fills Papyrus’s expression, and he sits back too, mirroring his brother. “You cannot hide it from me forever, Sans.”

“I’m not hiding anything from you.” 

“Then tell me, what do you dream about?” 

Sans doesn’t reply. 

Papyrus huffs out a disappointed breath, but does not let go of his brother’s hands, ignoring the way Sans tugs at them halfheartedly. He pats them gently. “I understand if you do not want to talk. If you can look me in the eyes and tell me that you are all right, then I will drop the subject.” 

Reluctantly, Sans drags his eyes to meet his brother’s large, concerned eyesockets, staring imploringly at him. “‘m all right, Pap,” he whispers, and as soon as he says the words he looks away again. Something large and sharp and spiny lodges itself in his gut, but he can’t tell his brother. He _can’t_. Papyrus is too sweet, too innocent, and he doesn’t deserve to have that all torn away because his older brother gets upset sometimes.

(Okay, so his older brother gets upset a lot of the time. And wakes up screaming most nights, now, screaming about demons with red eyes and red scarves stark like blood against white snow. And starts to cry for no reason, frustratingly, when the world is quiet and Sans has nothing but his own thoughts. Even his own thoughts swirl traitorously around in his own mind, sometimes, with no outlet, pressing against him maliciously, whispering to him his own worst fears.)

(But he can’t explain that to Papyrus. He just can’t.) 

Papyrus looks disappointed again. There’s that knife of self-loathing, driving its jagged edges into his skull. Sans tries to ignore it. “It’s fine, brother,” Papyrus attempts a smile. But Sans still hates himself, because he _put_ that broken smile on his brother’s face. 

Papyrus pulls his hand away and the knife jabs again, making him physically wince. “Sorry, Pap,” he whispers, wrinkling his eyes closed. 

Then two strong white arms lift him off the couch and squish him gently against his brother’s chest. Sans opens his eyes, surprised, but his brother has his eyes closed and pats him on the shoulder several times. He has his chin raised and a soft smile on his face, brimming with confidence in his brother. “It is okay, brother. I believe in you. If you are not ready to talk, then I accept that. But I just want you to know that I am here for you, and if you wish for assistance, then I will always be happy to provide it.” 

Sans shuts his eyes again, painfully, and buries his cheekbone in his brother’s chest. With his face there and his brother’s arms wrapped around him, he musters up the strength to, for now, shove away that finely serrated knife. He can feel Papyrus’s warmth against his own, and holds on a bit tighter, willing himself to absorb some of his brother’s confidence. “Thanks, Pap,” he says, and even though his smile is small and a bit watery it’s genuine. 

What did he ever do to deserve his brother? 

Papyrus hums a gentle response, and when he sits them both back on the couch Sans suddenly can’t muster the energy to move from where he’s still half-sitting on Papyrus’s legs. Papyrus was always physically affectionate, more so than his brother, so Sans rationalizes it as a peace offering of sorts, the way his arm is still wrapped around his brother’s neck. 

 

The next day, everyone has dispersed and Frisk has been tucked back into their comfortable bed with sincere well-wishes still floating around their room. Around midday, Alphys drops by for a quick check-up, clipboard, pen, and bag full of tools in tow. Toriel welcomes her in with a couple of pleasantries, with which Alphys fumbles along awkwardly, before Toriel pity on the uncomfortable PhD and lets her disappear into Frisk’s room.

Se re-emerges half an hour later, looking tired but pleased. Alphys gives her report, clacking points smoothly off her fingers. It’s all good news. “Blood pressure and fever are both back down to normal, that is, back within normal ranges. Their respiration is easier - means their breathing has gone back to normal as well - and their heartbeat has stabilized. The physical symptoms of fever dreams have dissipated, like sweating and convulsing and, well, what you saw yesterday.”

Something perceptibly relaxes in Toriel’s face. “Oh, thank goodness,” she breathes. “I am very relieved to hear this, Doctor. I cannot truly say how much I appreciate your assistance.”

Dr. Alphys sets her clipboard and bag down on Toriel’s couch. She’s...not entirely sure how to respond to that high praise, so she kind of smiles awkwardly, and hopes it suffices. Her earlier confidence, so refreshing to see, trickles away. “Y-yeah, no problem, uh, your Majesty.”

“Toriel, please.” Alphys nods awkwardly, then yawns. Toriel’s expression softens. “You seem tired. Please make yourself comfortable, Doctor.” Toriel smiles encouragingly at her, waving away her protests. In one swift motion, she expands her easily-drawn cubical bed into a proper bed, straightening the sheets and plumping the pillow. “What would you like to drink? Tea? Coffee?” 

Dr. Alphys settles rigidly on the bed, surprised at its softness. “Um. Coffee? Please? And...and some sugar, two of them, if...if you have them.” 

“Hee hee, no problem! It was quite _sweet_ of you to come over.”

“Um, of course,” Alphys replies, eyes narrowing at the pun and praying it was accidental.

Toriel slips into the kitchen, letting Alphys sit against the headboard to debate whether that was her cue to lie down or if royal decorum trumps personal comfort in this situation. From the kitchen, Toriel calls, “I must say, things were looking pretty _black_ for a little while back there, but you have brightened them right up!” 

It wasn’t accidental. She will never be free of the puns. Alphys buries her face in her hands and groans quietly. 

 

Three hours later, Toriel’s phone buzzes. She sets down her book - she’s on Use #47 for snail’s blood, as a primary ingredient in laundry detergent - and pulls her phone out of her pocket. On the counter, Alphys’s phone vibrates as well, but she does not wake up.

The message is from Undyne. It is a group text to their entire family. _HEY DOES ANYONE KNOW WHERE ALPHYS IS?!_ The exclamation point is a custom-made downward-pointing spear. 

_She is resting at my house_ , Toriel responds. 

There is no response. Then, several minutes later, a strong fist raps on her door. Toriel’s mouth twists, glancing at Alphys sleeping peacefully on her couch. As if reading her mind, the fist knocks again, lighter this time. 

Toriel opens the door quietly. “Hello, Undyne. Alphys is over there.”

“How’s she doing?” 

“She seems quite tired. She has been sleeping for about three hours by now.” 

“Good, she needs the nap. Well, thanks, your Majesty!” Undyne says, moving around Toriel and into the room. In one swift motion, she crosses the room and hefts the bag, the clipboard and pen, plus the cup of coffee. “I’m just gonna take her back to the lab,” Undyne explains. Then - and Toriel really shouldn’t be surprised by this - she uses her other arm to shift Alphys onto her shoulders, lifting her girlfriend as if Alphys weighed no more than a feather. Alphys doesn’t make a noise, but curls around Undyne’s neck, letting her tail rest on Undyne’s chest and burying her glasses in Undyne’s ear. It’s kind of adorable. 

“Oh,” Undyne says as she’s barraging out the door, stopping in the threshold. “We gotta pick up training with the kid, when they’re feeling better! I’m glad they’re okay! Fuhuhuhuhu!”

“I am sure they would enjoy that. They have been _fishing_ for reasons to get outside since they recovered, but I was un- _guppy_ with that idea.”

Undyne’s jaw drops, and her eyebrows form a V over her head. “Toriel that was terrible!”

“Was it really? I thought it was rather cl- _eel_ -ver!” 

Undyne just shakes her head and backs out the door, whispering “Toriel. Toriel that was terrible. Toriel that was disgusting I am leaving this house right now and if you ever infect Alphys with your puns I will fight you.”

Toriel laughs freely, decides against rolling up her sleeves and flexing at Undyne, and instead closes the door behind them with a smug little wave. Undyne screams (quietly, out of consideration for the snoozing Alphys) and sprints all the way back to the Lab. 

 

Over the next seven days, Frisk spends every waking moment with one of their friends. Toriel gives them a free pass from school for a week, for recovery time. At any other point Frisk might have jumped for joy at the thought of getting to do nothing for an entire week, except they kind of miss school with all their friends, and besides, Toriel can’t be home during the day because she’s still principal.

Frisk’s friends more than pick up the slack. Slowly, Frisk gets accustomed to the constant company. Sure, they know Papyrus cooks dinner for five straight evenings because he’s concerned, they know Undyne only drags them outside to spar for the fifth time in a day even when they just want to curl up and read because she’s determined to raise their Attack stats. That Sans sits awake in the corner of their room when they wake up in the middle of the night, panting and crying, because he wants to make sure they don’t get feverish again. Sure, the constant company grates on them sometimes. It’s...a change, to say the least, from their old life at home, but honestly? They can’t be happier with the difference. 

Because it’s nice, to have someone to spar with, to share meals with. To have someone with them in the middle of the night, when they walk to get a cup of water. To have someone tuck them in again, brush their hair and tell them that their dreams are just dreams, that it’s not their fault. 

Other than his ceaseless stress-cooking, Papyrus spends his time posting on social media outside, instigating snowball fights with Frisk and making ice replicas of his biceps. Sans...does something. Frisk doesn’t see him much, to be honest, except when they least expect him. Sometimes he shows up with a hot dog...? stand. Sometimes he appear shows up in the middle of his brother’s snowball fights and pelts Frisk and only Frisk with half-formed snowballs. 

Undyne’s taken up fencing as a recreational activity. She loves it. It’s spears, she tells Frisk eagerly as they walk around Toriel’s neighborhood, but with more finesse. She’s about to advance to the finals for the city - against both humans and monsters. She acts out her most recent matches with great vigor, hacking and slashing and clawing at the drifting snowflakes as if a flesh-and-blood opponent stands before her. Frisk follows every moment with wide, eager eyes. 

She tells them excitedly about her new post, as a supplement to her job as gym teacher, as an after-school instructor. Punching her fist in the air, she exclaims her excitement to “show a bunch of weenies how to defend themselves!” It’s a once-a-week, optional after-school class. But Toriel and Undyne expect the attendance to be hefty, especially because it is literally all Monster Kid talks about. 

Alphys visits when she can. She is preoccupied with hundreds of small tasks that Asgore cannot do himself. She continues distributing the cell phones to those in need, assembles a task force of graduate monsters to connect monster phone lines from Ebott to the other monster-dominated cities, writes online factbooks about the differences between monster and human culture, about everything from media to food to preferred climates. (Mew Mew Kissy Cutie 2 only comes up once, but the graduate monsters have to team up and make her redact its two-page rant section.)

Although Asgore literally wakes with the sun and works until the moon is at its apex, he finds time for Frisk. In between meetings and interviews and piles and piles of paperwork, he drops by for some gardening, to talk, or to simply sit and watch his child draw. 

 

That Wednesday afternoon, Asgore takes a break from his hundred stacks of paperwork and “old man meeting” invitations to relax with Frisk for a couple of hours. Without warning, he gifts Frisk a handmade tea-set, which contained a dozen varieties of tea powder. 

Overjoyed, they immediately set a kettle to boil, the sound bubbling in the empty kitchen. (Toriel makes herself scarce when Asgore comes to her house.) Frisk inspects every bag of mix carefully, fingers stroking an imaginary beard, scrutinizing the name and the ingredient list. When they reach the twelfth packet, they reach out and stroke at Asgore’s beard instead. He roars with laughter, caught off-guard, playfully swatting their hand away. 

Frisk picks up all of the tea bags and, to Asgore’s horror, opens them all with one meticulous slice of a knife. With a cheeky grin on their face that tells him they know exactly what they’re doing, they add a couple of pinches of each type of tea to the mug, happily ignoring his protests that the powders go in _one at a time_ to enjoy each flavor _separately_. 

While waiting for the kettle to whistle, they hop up onto the counter - he tenses and gets ready to catch them - and they launch themself at him, grinning even more mischievously, and latch onto his horns, swinging around them like they would playground equipment. Asgore isn’t sure if he should feel offended or break down laughing.

The kettle whistles, and Frisk drops all the way to the ground - it’s a long drop, but they take the fall with alarming grace. They proudly bring their abomination to the table and motion Asgore to join them. Then, with a sly look and a small sip (it tastes atrocious to them, but they pretend it’s delicious), they pass their cup to Asgore. 

Asgore looks from the cup of tea - it’s a strange, brown-and-green color, the hue of swamp murk - then at Frisk, who watches him expectantly. He swallows and smiles at Frisk. “Oh dear,” he says to himself. Frisk’s predatory grin only grows. 

For Frisk. He tips the tea and downs it all in one gulp. It...tastes horrendous. There is a terrible combination of sweet tea and bitter flower tea swirling around in the mug that burns Asgore’s throat like acid. Frisk, clearly excited, claps their hands together and says “How was it?” 

“It was...delicious, dear child,” he lies through his teeth. He thinks he can feel his teeth curdling in on themselves. 

“Then you want another cup!” They spring eagerly from their seat, and Asgore truly cannot help the refusal that springs from his mouth.

That sends Frisk into stitches. “Your face!” they tell him, laughing. “I wish I had my camera! You made a face like- ” they pull the sides of their mouth out and stick out their tongue, then squeeze their eyes together. “Gross!” 

“It...was not quite to my taste,” Asgore admits, watching the child with amusement.

“I know,” they reply, pulling their face again. “I could tell! Let me go put this away and then let’s go outside!”

Asgore watches them scurry away and stash the box in their backpack. When they return, he takes them by the hand to lead them to the garden.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hoo boy, I'm really excited for this next chapter. The story's been relatively peaceful so far, but suffice to say that the next chapter will be...less so.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter took a bit longer than normal - there were edits I needed to make farther along in the story last week. To make up for it, here's a longer chapter, with a healthy dose of death.

The evening after their visit to Asgore, Frisk decides to give themself a break from their homework (there’s so much, and Toriel won’t make exceptions for anyone, not even her own child! not fair) so instead of plug-and-chugging away at the Pythagorean Theorem they watch Mettaton prance around onscreen. He’s on his way to making it big aboveground, working through a string of A-listers with which he wants to secure interviews. His last few programs are breaks from the normal song and dance, starring dual episodes with other hit celebrities. For this evening, he’s working with Gordon Ramsay on a special, _Cooking with a Killer Duo_! Frisk wryly remembers his texts inundating their phone. Even during the middle of class. It’s all he’s texted Frisk about for _days_.

Frisk wedges themself more firmly into the couch cushions. They spend the first half of the program giggling helplessly at the human’s stoic blindness to Mettaton’s glistening legs, the way he ignores Mettaton as he bats his mechanical eyelashes with a _click-click-click_. It’s nearly a comedy act with the interaction between the two, the sultry comments from Mettaton’s metal trill and Ramsay’s infuriated counterpoint. The star chef insults the mother of anything and everything that moves - including the toaster, much to Mettaton’s dismay. Toriel’s not home tonight, so Frisk can comment and laugh as loudly as they want at the TV screen, now that they’re not inclined to keep their voice down to allow their mother time to grade papers. 

The second half, Frisk feels themself zoning out on the television. Normally they can keep their focus centered on Mettaton (if not his face, then his glaringly pink boots), but their eyes keep sliding to the sides of the television despite their best efforts. They stare at the bottom corner of the screen with glazed eyes for several minutes, until the sand digging behind their eyelids grows too heavy.

Clearly, inundating their eyes with radiation isn’t helping them stay awake. With a reluctant sigh, they fumble for the remote and power off the television, hearing more than seeing the screen go black with a mechanical twang. Their legs fill with lead and they stand, unmoving, just watching the screen go black, seeing it power off over and over again in their mind’s eye. 

Finally they shake themself awake, blinking furiously, and trudge into their room, dragging Sans’s jacket behind them like a blanket. Their room is hot and humid, oppressive. Unusually so for the permanent winter that’s gripped their home for the past months. Idly, they Frisk wonders if the air conditioning is busted or something. They pull themself to their feet to turn the fan on, but nearly fall asleep on their way, stopping and stooping tiredly over their carpet - they’re _really_ exhausted, wow - then plop themself back in bed. Mission accomplished. At least their room still looks normal, unaffected by the bizarre heat: clothes are still folded and neatly lining their closet, shoes in an organized pile by the door, corners of their blankets tucked under the mattress. 

The fan helps a little bit, but they still fight to keep their eyes open. Each time they blink, the light-green walls seem to press in around them a bit more, squeezing the air out of their lungs like a nut in a nutcracker. When they breathe out, the next breath of air seems sharper. 

Panicked at the knives in their lungs, they try to breathe deeply and find they can’t manage anything more than a shallow inhale. 

Their eyes snap open and weld themselves shut at the same time. Frisk tries to sit upright, to claw at their chest, but something pins their arms to their sides. The strange force leaves them to flop ineffectively against their mattress, like some demonic blow-up toy deflating erratically. Then, even that movement is cut off, as their abdomen stops responding, then their legs, until everything down to their toes is immobile. 

Slowly, the tight adrenaline slips out of them, loosening its wicked grasp on their chest. They blink rapidly, trying to keep themself awake, but to no avail. Sleep drags their struggling consciousness under with gnarled claws. 

 

They wake up to light seeping through the ceiling above them and golden flowers twirling around their fingers. 

They jolt right to their feet, heart racing, and several flowers tear up from the ground as their fists clench with terror. “Hello?” they call, stumbling to their feet. No, no, not a Reset - they’d _promised_ -

No. They just fell asleep, they must be dreaming.

This time, when Frisk draws breath, their lungs expand as they should, letting them inhale deeply. Frisk spends a couple of seconds moderating their breathing, imagining the oxygen entering their bloodstream and sweeping away their hysteria. Slowly, as the imagined molecules fight off little cartoony sparks that Frisk imagines lacing their bloodstream, reason reasserts itself. They glance down at themself. Instead of their comfortable pajamas, they’re wrapped in their old blue-and-purple shirt. Okay, somehow they changed clothes and moved back Underground, all without waking up. Maybe they suddenly developed a penchant for sleepwalking. 

Eh. Stranger things have happened. 

As they tread around the cave, their pants snag on errant strands of grass. The greenery looks frail and soft, but when Frisk bends over to poke at one, it feels knifelike and rigid. Frowning, Frisk shies away from the grass and moves toward the walls of the cave. Heedless of the light, shadows creep up the walls like moss at the corners of the room. Frisk trails their eyes upward to the yawning gap above their head. This cave can’t be the same as the one in which they fell, they deduce unsteadily, because there’s no exit carved into the rock. Just an eerily smooth ring of wall surrounding them, sloping perfectly toward the sky. 

Trepidatiously, Frisk pulls a stick from their Dimensional Box and prods at one of the walls. It feel firm enough, so when Frisk places a palm flat against the rock they’re only mildly surprised to find that the rock is cool and damp and very much real. It feels bumpy, though. Even where it looks smooth to Frisk’s eyes, there are small cracks and bumps in the rock that they should definitely be able to see, but can’t. Odd.

They look up, and yep that’s the Sun, searing at their eyes. They squeeze their eyes shut - well, squeeze them shut tighter - and blink several times in rapid succession to readjust to the cool darkness of the cave. Then they spend a couple of seconds nudging at the dirt with their bare feet, one of the few patches not covered in flowers. In their periphery, something moves, but when they turn it’s just the grass, undulating without end. 

They exhale into the silence, and their breath is so loud it surprises even them. They huff a laugh, feeling silly for their paranoia, and hear it echo around the cavern.

Swallowing fear and replacing it with curiosity, they rap their knuckles against the walls of the cavern, feeling condensation congeal around their knuckles, attracted to Frisk’s hand with an unnatural magnetism. The _thunk_ from the wall as they rap their hand against it sounds strong enough, sounds like rock, even though Frisk doesn’t quite have a doctorate in slamming their fists against cave walls. They take a couple of steps backward, resting their feet on a patch of grass, and study the wall intently, scrutinizing the rocks for any hint of a door. All they can find is a random assortment of moss spotting the walls without any true rhyme or reason. 

Their phone weighs in their back pocket, and Frisk takes a moment to comb through its contents. Everything from several minutes ago is still there, at least - a steaming slice of snail pie, a couple of pieces of monster candy, Sans’s jacket, a toy magnifying glass, a camera, a mug of Sea Tea. 

Shaking their head at their silliness - it’s just a garden with a couple of walls, they’ll find their way out - Frisk pulls the stick out of the Dimensional box. They poke at some of the grass again, giggling when it appears to wave back. Maybe this place isn’t so bad!

Suddenly, a vine twirls around their ankle, clamping down around their bone, and they hiss in surprise. Frisk jerks away but the vine pulls backward and they fall, slamming their face into the ground. 

They shake their head furiously, split ends smacking their face, and pull themself up to stare at the vine. The faceless greenery waves its fronds innocently back, imitating a breeze in the still cavern. They take a few cautious steps toward it, holding their stick out in two shaking hands in front of their chest. It goes completely still. 

The grass in their periphery keeps moving. The unsettled feeling flares back up in full-force, some instinct Frisk can’t quite name screaming at them to _get out_. Feeling uncertainty roar in their stomach, they keep their stick in two trembling hands and back up toward the wall of the cavern. It’s solid against their back, and alone, Frisk faces down a garden moving in completely still air. 

They turn slowly - the plants are creeping them out - and rest their forehead against the wall, willing rationality back into their brain. It’s just a garden. Just a garden.

But Frisk still doesn’t know where they are. Or even how they got here. Are they dreaming? This isn’t even the most terrifying of their nightmares, although the prickling anxiety twitching along their spine would rank it pretty highly.

Something whips through the air behind their head, making the hairs on their neck turn to alarmed spikes and shiver along their spine. With a sharp ripple, the blades of the grass turn suddenly to knifepoints and stab through their socks to gouge their bare feet. They wince and curl their toes against the grass. Suddenly, it’s soft again, soft and waving slowly. 

“Hello...?” Frisk calls, eyes scanning the room. There’s no breeze, but the greenery around them still sways languidly, unalarmed. 

A contorted breath sounds directly in front of their left ear, jagged and sharp. Frisk jumps so hard their head skims against the curved wall. Behind them, there is nothing - just the stone, as smooth and unassuming as it’s always been. 

They call another “hello?” but their voice is shaky and timid even to their ears. 

Suddenly, the whole cavern is moving. It’s always been moving, things have always been changing, how did Frisk not realize before? The grass, of course, even without the breeze - but the moss is moving too, sliding along the walls and curling onto the ground, covering patches of grass and leaving behind them trails of browned and dead stems. The shadows are elongating along the walls, reaching up and up and up the cavern walls until they block part of the sun’s light. Even the dirt beneath their feet rumbles, and with a surreal motion like mixing the dirt churns and produces rocks, mottled with granite and andesite, to replace the soft covering that previously protected Frisk’s feet. 

“Greetings!” says a child’s voice from right next to them. The voice is high-pitched and happy and it makes every bone in Frisk’s body shudder with fear. 

Frisk whips around, pointing the stick toward the new voice. The space behind them is still empty, save the calm undulating grass. The air is dead and silent and _the cavern is still moving_. Nausea scalds Frisk’s throat. “W-who’s there?”

The voice laughs, a frighteningly familiar giggle. Frisk’s breathing freezes, and they feel kind of sick. “It’s me! How wonderful it is to finally meet you in person.” 

The last two words drop to a hiss. Frisk’s hand drops, insensate, to their side. Their eyes grow wide and their muscles lock and panic seizes every inch of their body. They stumble backward with no particular direction. Their panic swells again in a chant of _get away away away_ , even louder than before, but the child’s voice reverberates from every inch of the wall that traps them. 

“I am not very pleased with you, Frisk,” the voice, and the voice sounds like Toriel’s when she reprimands Monster Kid for practicing Papyrus’s laugh during her lectures, except higher and distorted. Demonic. 

Frisk whips around, looking for the voice, but they still can’t find its source. Something slimy and weightless crawls along Frisk’s back, and they turn around again, only to find the walls staring back at them. The patches of moss on the wall slide slowly, rearrange themselves on the wall to form an almost comical frown.

The voice tsks at them. “But do not be afraid! I can do you no harm, as you know. After all, I am nothing more than a disembodied voice in your head, right?” The voice is spoken like a whisper but rumbles, thrums through their body with impossible power. 

Something whooshes by Frisk, and they turn again. Dimly, they think how stupid they must look, continually pirouetting in fear of a threat they can’t even see. 

“Right?” the voice hisses, this time low and sibilant and furious, and Frisk feels a knife at their neck, right over their jugular as a second solid point presses against Frisk’s back. On instinct, they try to arch away, but an invisible force stops them.

The voice is a whisper, low and hateful. With careful precision, the knife circles around their shoulder to rest, almost like a caress, the nape of their neck. “Right, Frisk? Remember how you threw me away, when I was so close to achieving victory?” 

Frisk doesn’t move a muscle. They want their mother, they want Sans or Papyrus, but if they speak their knife will plunge into their throat. “How you stopped me when I was _inches away_ from my happy ending? Do you remember?” the voice asks, uncannily calm. Moss curls up their leg, burning their skin like acid, and they just barely resist the urge to kick out against the pain. The knife tenses around their throat, and Frisk swallows a sob, and -

The knife disappears from their throat. 

In front of them, a child steps into view. 

“I will not kill you just yet. What would the joy be in that? No. I want to play with you first,” ther voice states without a hint of emotion. “Yes, will you be my friend?”

Chara looks eerily similar to Frisk. Their eyes are closed, calm. They have the same style of shirt, the same haircut, the same facial structure. The same determination burning in their Soul. 

Suddenly, Chara’s eyes snap open, wide and bloodred and their face splits into a grin that slashes straight through their flushed cheeks, and Frisk sees a locket bouncing on their chest, glowing with a sickly yellow light. “What do you say, dear friend?” 

Chara lets Frisk run two terrified eyes over their form. But they allow Frisk no more than several seconds before lunging forward with the knife ready to plunge into Frisk’s eye.

Frisk jerks out of the way on instinct, barely pivoting to track Chara’s movement with their eyes. “Or not,” Chara pouts, and lunge again, launching into a dizzying series of motions: stab-and-turn, stab-and-turn, jump-slice-hop-slash-skip. Frisk barely manages to leap out of the way each time, trying to shake their hair out of their face and keep their eyes fixed on Chara’s assault at the same time.

Then, suddenly, they stop. Chara twirls the knife casually in their hand. It’s a small, beaten-up thing, full of nicks and slashes in the middle, but honed to a fine point around the edges and at the tip of the blade. Chara’s smile stretches nearly to their ears. “It has been such a long time. How good it is to see your beautiful face!”

“Chara, I don’t want to fight you,” Frisk says, raising their stick to protect themself. 

Chara’s eyes narrow. “You already fought me,” they point out coolly. “Or don’t you remember? When you forced me to kill myself by sparing that stupid skeleton?”

“You were going to kill him!” they reply, shaking their head to clear the memory. “You-” they cut off their sentence to jerk sideways and avoid the knife that slices past their face. 

“I was so close!” Chara shrieks, suddenly furious, their eyes gleaming with bloodlust. “Do you know what it is to get this close to victory -” they smash their hand into a fist, uncaring of the small cut that opens along their thumb “- and be stopped at the _very last moment_ by a stupid little child?” 

Chara sucks in a deep breath, bowing their head and calming themself. When they look back up, there’s a small smile rooted on their face. Their cheeks glow red in perfect circles. 

Around Frisk, the flowers whisper and mutter and hiss terrible little things. The shadows twine around Frisk’s socked feet and pull. Frisk leaps to the side, dancing away. Chara watches them calmly, knife still in hand, tiny drops of blood dripping down their hand and onto the flowers. Like baby birds, the flowers reach up and snatch at the droplets, closing their petals around the blood with small snaps. 

“But that’s fine. You’re still the same dumb little child,” they say, rolling their eyes with childish disdain. “You still have the same, dumb weaknesses.”

In a flash of metallic, glinting light, Chara hurls the dagger toward Frisk’s neck. The dagger swings inches from their throat, then slices harmlessly on by. 

Frisk watches Chara, expecting more rage or disappointment, but Chara just watches the knife skitter into the shadows of the cave’s walls and disappear. The darkness swallows it soundlessly, motionlessly. “Oh well, no more knife for me,” they seem to pout. Then they smile. “I have other things to use anyway.”

Frisk steps toward them cautiously, ignoring the trembling in their arms and the fear shooting through their veins, and starts to say something - something conciliatory, probably - when Chara makes a sharp upward movement. Vines shoot out of the Earth as if ejected from the barrel of a gun and twine around Frisk’s feet and arms. Frisk tries to jump to one side but dread pins their limbs in place, letting the greenery anchor them down.

“What are you doing?” Frisk asks, desperately pulling against the weeds. Their only achievement is to dig the vines’ thorns deeper into their skin. They wince, but only tug harder, jamming their ankles against the restraints. They aren’t surprised to find that the bindings don’t move. Blood trickles slowly down their arms and their legs and Frisk watches with a mixture of fascination and revulsion as the flowers snap up to swallow their blood, too, then slink back into the ground as if content. 

“Oh well,” Chara sings, watching Frisk struggle with a glint in their eye. The darkness proffers to them the handle of their knife, but Chara just toes it back. “Oh, I won’t be needing that,” they say conspiratorially to the shadows, their eyes never leaving Frisk. “I have a much better weapon.” 

Frisk looks up, wincing at the brambles that tear at their forearm and ankles, wondering what they’re going to have to dodge _now_. Instead of a weapon, however, Chara pulls an orange heart, inverted, out of their back pocket. 

“How noble,” they muse detachedly, then whirl and whip the Soul toward an immobile Frisk. It slams right into their chest before they can even think to react, making them choke on their own gasp. 

The walls of a majestic castle sprout from nothing. There are yellow flowers here, too, but those are silent. An empty throne sits at the corner of the room, covered in a sad worn white tarp, and watches its fallen king. 

Asgore kneels in front of them. His crown lies discarded on the floor. Blood still wells up and mats his robe, staining the purple a disgusting brown. Even as they watch, his face distorts, falling apart and reforming, his hairs writhing on his face and parts of his cheek and eyelids sagging horrifically. Frisk moves to cover their eyes but they can’t - they watch, revolted, as he stumbles toward them, one of his legs cracked out of proportion.

Chara flicks their wrist downward carelessly, and the vines fall off Frisk’s arms and and ankles so fast that they lurch forward, nearly colliding with Chara’s chest. “I’ve always loved the way people look when they’re dying,” Chara whispers, wrapping one of Frisk’s hands in their own. Frisk pulls away, disgusted. Chara giggles.

Asgore’s trident clatters to his side with a broken _tink-tink-tink_ as he struggles to breathe through lungs that no longer exist. When he speaks, his words come out choked and quiet, like a recorder trying to play through a shattered stem. 

“Take my soul,” he implores Frisk, holding a stained hand out to them, a twisted invitation to dance. “Pass through the barrier. Lead a happy life, child.” 

“No!” Frisk jolts forward, eyes watering, trying to grab Asgore’s hand. But before they can, he turns inward, grabs his Soul, and yanks it clean out of his chest. Like a stone splitting against the ground, he falls without a further sound. His Soul, the same one that had slammed through their chest, hovers for several moments above the ground, above the fallen King. Frisk watches it, sick with fear, wondering what will happen if they step forward - they need some container, some way to protect his Soul and give it back but they have nothing. Their hand twitches indecisively toward it, longing to save, but they don’t want to absorb it accidentally. After a few fading pulses, the Soul shatters into a thousand jagged pieces onto the floor of the big lonely empty castle.

Frisk’s eyes sting. They try to breathe, to focus on their own heartbeat, but they can’t. They reclaim their hand shakily, drawing it protectively toward their chest, and use their shoulder to wipe away the stinging in their eyes. “Why?”

“Why not? You killed him, after all.”

Frisk shakes their head mutely, unable to blink. “You know, you cannot hide from your crimes forever,” Chara chirps cheerily, in a tone reminiscent of a teacher smiling through a lecture. On their perches in Asgore’s garden, the birds chirp with them, singing a song of sadness and hate. It sounds like a thousand out-of-tune pianos clashing in one great hall. There’s no rhythm, no discernible pattern, and it leaves Frisk feeling jittery and sick. 

“He gave me his Soul, to make it to the surface,” Frisk replies, blinking their eyes several times. Discreetly, they roll their ankle to try to regain bloodflow, thinking desperately for a way out. “That wasn’t my fault.” 

“You incited him to kill himself! He only wanted to atone for his sins,” Chara shakes their head at Frisk. “How does it feel to be a sin, Frisk? To be a _mistake_?”

Frisk draws back from the word, eyes widening and unseeing, pushing thoughts of their mother - they haven’t thought about her for a long, long time, ever since they met Toriel why would you they’d found another mother, better, who wanted them _you’re not worth the time_ you are worth everything, my child _leave me behind was I_ because they’re not good enough.

Chara locks eyes with Frisk, and grin hugely, and as the caved walls of Waterfall stretch up toward the yawning ceiling of the cave a green heart spears Frisk in the chest like the blow of a hammer, leaving them gasping for air. Around them, the floor is cratered with looming spears. Moisture gathers into rivulets and drips down the walls and onto the floor, another irregular rhythm of water pattering against the floor, where it gathers with coagulated blood and globs of pure determination. 

Undyne the Undying screams at them. Her face is melting and reforming into a shape each time more hideous. Her armor boils with the force of her will. Her gills are trickling down the side of her neck, insubstantial and liquidy. Her webbed fingers are sizzling. But somehow, Frisk knows that he scream is not of pain. 

No. It’s pure rage. At them.

Frisk stumbles behind a spear massive spear, sticking out of the ground like a cracked rib, trying to hide from Undyne’s burning gaze.

She doesn’t let them escape. “You cannot run, murderer!” she chokes out in a voice like she’s taking her lungs and stringing words through a grater, one at a time. Her voice is strong, even as she’s tearing herself apart. 

“Undyne -”

“You can’t win this!” Undyne screams, her voice growing in pitch, morphing and warping around every word. “I’ll never give up!” 

She tries to form a spear in one outstretched hand, but her claws turn to dust before the spear finishes materializing. 

And just like that, it’s over. Her dust floats gently to the floor, coating the blood and determination splattered on the grounds of Waterfall with a faint grainy sheen.

Frisk gags, eyes stinging, simultaneously unable to look away from the floor where Undyne had stood and trying desperately to look away. Chara watches them with amused eyes and moves right in front of them, then steps on Undyne’s helmet and cracks it into a thousand pieces. 

“Why are you doing this?” they choke, unable to look away from the splinters of metal sticking out of Undyne’s remains.

“I just want to help you!” the voice hums glibly. Chara bends over to pick up one of the spears lodged into the ground and, with a movement faster than Frisk can track, whips it toward Frisk’s face. They blink awake right as it passes through their nose, and too late to avoid damage, stumble backward. It doesn’t hurt them. 

Chara throws back their head and laughs. “Huh, this has really gotten to you! I don’t blame you,” they sympathize, shaking their head admonishingly. “How can you live with yourself? How could you, given that you have not yet atoned your transgressions?” they ask between giggles. “Frisk. Dear, dearest Frisk. You know that you cannot shield yourself from their misery forever. Just because you spared them once, that does not make you any greater. You are nothing more than a murderer, snivelling and weak, unable to acknowledge the consequences of your actions!” 

“This wasn’t me, that was you!” they plead. They wrap their shaking arms around their torso and squeeze their eyes shut, ducking their head, wishing that Chara was wrong, wishing it wasn’t their fault.

It wasn’t them. It wasn’t. It was Chara. Without Chara, they wouldn’t have killed anyone - it’s their _nature_ to spare. What did Sans tell them - they love everyone, that’s the difference -

But Frisk can’t deny that it was their hands that held the knife. Without them, everyone would have lived, would have kept fighting. One day, monsters would’ve broken the barrier. They weren’t necessary, not really. There are plenty of other humans who would have done the same, without genocide. 

Couldn’t they have mustered a stronger defense? Couldn’t they have loved more? Couldn’t they have fought back? 

How are they any better than Chara? 

“Hmmm, shall we make a list? Already I have shown you Asgore and Undyne. Let us see...Alphys! Had you not been the one to fall, then Alphys would not have watched Undyne’s death. But die Undyne did, each time at your hands. Over, and over, and over. And poor Alphys? She watched! Over, and over, and over, until you know what happened? She could no longer stand her grief take it any more. In the end, the one to take her Soul was herself. 

“Sure, you did not hold the knife. But make no mistake - the notebook you wielded against Undyne? That was the real murder weapon. When you killed Undyne, you drove Alphys to erase herself. Her death is all thanks to you! Are you not proud?” 

“T-that wasn’t me,” Frisk protests, thinking about Alphys alone in the Lab watching Undyne disintegrate, over and over and over again, wanting to die. “That wasn’t me!”

This isn’t a dream. It’s a nightmare.

“Still not convinced? Let us continue, then,” Chara laughs, gleeful in the face of their despair. Chara jerks their head to the side and a bright blue heart slices through Frisk’s eye, and gleaming smooth yellow walls spiral toward an orange ceiling. Light filters in through the room, glinting off burnished patterned glass and throwing long, looming shadows across the room. Bones litter the floor, cracked and shattered and useless, and Frisk feels tears drip-dripping down their face. 

Sans stands across from them, less than five tiles away, while something red spills out of his shirt. His pupils are tiny and surprised and sad and tears are coming from him, too, even as he shrugs and slides out of the room. His jacket looks so, so heavy, sprinkled with blood and bones and his brother’s dust.

“No,” Frisk says, shaking their head furiously, unable to look away. “No, _Sans_ -”

“Papyrus,” Sans says in that voice, they know that voice, the one where he’s sad but smiles anyway because that’s all he can do, devoid of joy or hope. “D’you want anything?” 

He stumbles out of sight, leaving a splotched trail of red behind. All that’s left is Chara, Frisk, and the unperturbed chirping of the birds.

“I don’t want to fight,” Frisk sobs, the last of their restraint shattered. They’re definitely crying now. They just want to leave, they want this to stop, they want to _go home_ and find out that everything is all right. “I don’t want to fight, please let me go!”

They summon their Spare button and slams their fist against it, hoping against logic that Chara will accept their plea. But Chara watches them impassively, their feigned cheer slipping for a moment in the face of Frisk’s grief. The light from the Judgment Hall glints across Chara’s cheekbones and scatters, as if their bones are made of knives. The tiles twinkle with bitterness. “You do not have a choice,” Chara responds gravely, and another blue heart, this one lighter and bouncier, whirls through their neck. 

Snow begins to drift down from the ceiling, fat flakes that wipe the heat of the Hall from their face. For one cruel second, Frisk hopes that this is the outside world, that they’re waking up, that they’ll come to outside Toriel’s house and they’ll walk back in the house and she’ll fret and fuss and give them apple cider and send them back to sleep, but then the ground catches up with the sky and the black trees outside of Snowdin jab at the clouds, and their hope only makes its destruction more painful. 

Papyrus’s scarf curls at their feet like a loyal dog, and when Frisk steps toward Papyrus’s motionless head, the scarf rips into shreds. 

Frisk’s mouth moves without words, a litany of protestations, _no no no no no_. “Anyone can be a good person if they try!” Papyrus whispers shakily, still trying his best to muster up a smile for Frisk, his killer. His dust mixes with the snow and becomes disgusting grey sludge. He stares right at Frisk’s Soul and smiles, like he trusts them. They want to laugh, but they’re crying too hard. They did this. “I believe in you!” 

“Papyrus- ” Frisk tries to say, to apologize. But before they can say anything more - before they can think of anything to say that would justify them, which is _nothing_ \- Papyrus’s head disintegrates into a thousand tiny flecks. 

Frisk hates this with all their might. “Someone, please help!” they cry out, hands freezing as they dig their nails into the hardened ground beneath the snow. Maybe if they wish hard enough - if only they could see the stars - “Please - Mom, Sans, P-papyrus, anyone...please...”

But nobody came. 

“Last one,” Chara tells them in a faux-reassuring manner as they kneel on the snow, frozen and horrified, their tears steaming in the cold air and melting away blotches of the snow-coated ground like a trickle of acid rain. Chara giggles their childish laugh and pulls a purple Soul from their pocket, striding a few steps to kneel next to Frisk. The grasses by their knees, buried in snow, sprout and lift their head, forcing them to stare at the Soul in Chara’s hands. 

“A beautiful thing, isn’t it,” Chara muses, tossing the Soul up and down as if it were a baseball, a plaything. “Did you know? Out of all of the Souls I have, this one is most strongly connected to you. Such an admirable bond. She loved you, you know. And you love her too!”

“What did you do?” Frisk manages to choke out, eyes trained, horrified, on the Soul bobbing gently in Chara’s palms. They didn’t think their tiny body could hold any more despair, honestly. They have to try to get Toriel back - that’s their mother - “ _Give her back_!”

“Why?” 

“So I can bring save her! She - she was your mother too, don’t you care?”

“She doesn’t want to be saved by you,” Chara states calmly, as if reporting on the properties of a peculiar igneous rock - mundane and not particularly interesting. They turn the Soul over in their hand, watching it trace a glittering purple arc against the jabbing black of the trees. “After what you’ve done to her? Ha! She should never trust you again.” 

Frisk flinches as if struck. Toriel trusts them. Frisk knows this, Chara is lying.

Strange, though, how she trusts them, how she can even stand to be the in same room as them. Why would she allow a murderer under her roof...?

Because Frisk has been lying to her. This whole time, and they were never honest. How _could_ she trust them?

“Still, it was full of such love,” they continue. “Such hope. What fun it will be to see that all destroyed,” they say, almost sadly, then twist and with incredible speed throw the Soul. It slices through the locket dangling from Frisk’s neck. They don’t bother to move away, closing their eyes in resignation. Maybe if they don’t open their eyes, they’ll wake up. 

But they can’t keep their eyes closed, and around them the walls of the Ruins flicker with fire and dancing light. 

“Mom,” Frisk whimpers, no longer caring about how futile it must be, about how these are their _memories_ and the past is unchangeable, they leap forward as a slit gashes through Toriel’s face and try to cradle Toriel’s head in their hands. They are incorporeal, and Toriel’s head passes through their palms, but they try to hug Toriel anyway and ignore how Toriel disintegrates and whispers “do you hate me that much?” Frisk screams _no_ even though it’s futile because Toriel is already dead.

Frisk balls their hands into fists and shoves them into their eyes and fall to their knees on the hard floor of the Ruins, trying desperately to tell themself that it’s not real, it’s not your fault, this wasn’t you, but they’re covered in the dust of everyone they’ve ever loved and it sticks to them like sin. 

Light floods the room a pale yellow, and they can feel the rock around them closing in like their own demise, like the scorn they deserve. The roar of the fire dims to silence, leaving a strange ringing pressing against their ears in its absence. Around their knees, the tile beneath their legs gives way to a soft bed of flowers that still whisper indecipherable terrible things, twisted secrets, and Frisk knows that every single one of them is true. 

Frisk sobs indecipherable apologies, choking on their words and the flickers of their fingers. They _know_ that this is their fault, why couldn’t they have been kinder, been better? 

They don’t deserve their family.

That truth settles in their chest, weighing heavily on their sternum. The realization jolts across their face, stemming their tears closing their expression off, cold. Frisk scrubs their face with steady hands. 

Like a mantra, their own self-loathing pounds against their lungs. With every breath their Soul becomes more visible. It’s blackening, floating out of their chest. Behind their eyes they see Toriel and Sans and Papyrus, Undyne and Asgore and Alphys, disintegrating and bleeding and dying, and as these images flash through them their Soul starts to chip away, little sliver breaking off and littering the floor. How could they ever think they were worth their friends? They didn’t have the strength to be honest with their own family! They’re a coward, despicable and unforgivable. 

Cracks spider the way up Frisk’s Soul. They close their eyes, knowing they should be afraid of the darkness that reaches up to envelop them, but instead they welcome it. 

Their Soul fills with despair.

 

Chara watches Frisk’s Soul calmly as it starts to disintegrate, breaking off piece by piece, like a chocolate chip cookie disintegrating to nothing. Vaguely, they wonder if they’ll be able to eat when they take Frisk’s body from them. First priority: eat all the chocolate. 

They pretty much disregard the child curled on the flowers below them. Frisk is irrelevant, now. Triumph washes over them. Chara beat them, once and for all. Did what Frisk did to them while they were fighting that stupid skeleton. Oh yes, they _deserve_ this reward. It was tiring, sapping all of Frisk’s determination for months. 

Idly, Chara watches as Frisk’s Soul completely falls apart, the chunks black and hardened, then rises gently to reform into two halves. Slowly, the color returns to red, and begins to pulse gently. The beat of their heart is slower, Chara notes with interest, stepping forward to peer at it, cup their hands around it, cradling it as they would a delicate bird egg. The rhythm seems sluggish. Sadder. 

Chara shrugs and tightens their hands around the Soul, grabbing at as much of Frisk’s life force as they can - they’ll take both hands if the Soul will let them. But Frisk’s Soul is stubborn, nearly as stubborn as they are, and one half refuses to budge with Chara’s hands as they force the second deep into their own chest. 

Chara closes their eyes, elated, as warm _feeling_ floods their body. Oh, but they’d forgotten what it was to have a Soul. They can feel so much! Everything abruptly seems ten times stronger - the light from the Sun washing over them, the gentle caress of the grass on their bare feet, the strain of their muscles from holding their hands out in victory. Chara can breathe, can _really_ breathe, and they taste the dust motes swirling around the air with great satisfaction. 

After several sweet, sonorous seconds, Chara reopens their eyes. In front of them, the other half of the Soul floats, still gently pulsing in that same slowed tempo. Chara contemplates it dispassionately as it wavers toward Frisk. They cannot absorb it but they also don’t really need it, and they can already steal Frisk’s body - it doesn’t look like Frisk will be moving soon, regardless.

A shiver of vicious pleasure courses through their chest. Chara closes their eyes, breathe deeply, and open them again, appreciating every single bright petal on every single flower. Then they reach down and pluck one out of the ground, just to feel the sensation of the petals shredding beneath their fingers. 

After a moment’s contemplation, they set the withering flower onto the hard ground, then after some consideration lay it neatly over Frisk’s mouth. What a nice aesthetic touch. They contemplate their masterpiece for a moment, pleased. 

The light from the Sun starts to fade around them. The shadows begin to stretch and chun, pooling around Chara’s feet and Frisk’s frozen body. As the light from above fades, Chara steps on top of the inky blackness over to Frisk’s fallen form and hold two hands over them, reaching out to the darkness and willing it up, up, to coat them. Under Chara’s direction, the pool of black covers their shoulders and ears and seeps into their nose, and Chara vaguely wonders if they’re going to drown when it covers their face. For several moments Chara watches the defenseless human child, even more pleased - now the splotch of yellow on their face looks garish, compared to the inky black swirling around their hair and slipping up their face - and Chara grins. 

With a smug, careless shrug, they curl their fingers upward. As the vines writhe and shift and lift Chara up toward the last vestiges of light, faint the shadow cast by their body leaving the cavern covers the small bit of skin left visible on Frisk’s face, until there is nothing left of them in the swollen black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> But it's just a dream, right?


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chara has a fight with Frisk's toes, and Toriel learns a couple of things about her child.

Consciousness filters slowly back into Frisk’s body. The inhabiting Soul opens their eyes with slow, jerky movements. It flexes each of Frisk’s fingers, one by one, watching their hands twitch with amazement. It closes its eyes, blinks them a couple of times, feeling its eyelids flutter against one another, then sits up and wonders at the sensation of Frisk’s shirt rustling softly against its body. 

Chara digs their fingernails, meticulously clipped, into the soft flesh of their arm. The sensation, so foreign, grates against their nerves, and sends pain shooting up their newfound nervous system.They release the pressure and the pain stops, so they claw at their arm until blood seeps out. There’s still adrenaline pounding through their veins - it’s not hard at all to dig their fingers through the flesh of their arm hard enough to split the skin. Their teeth, still rounded and dulled in Frisk’s mouth, stretch their lips and spread their skin unevenly across their pale face. Chara’s own laugh startles them, so unused as they are to the sound.

“Cool,” they mutter to themself, squinting through the dark at their blood. Their very own blood. It’s been so long since they’ve bled. They lick it curiously. It tastes like iron and smells like rust. 

Chara revels in the newfound sensations. Then, they take a moment to just...breathe. They’re feeling, and that’s new, too. Something they vaguely pinpoint as joy bubbles up in their chest, and quite inadvertently they grin with the victory that floods their mind. They spent so long dead, soulless, they’d forgotten what it was to be really, truly happy. 

Before the humans robbed them over their freedom, that is. Their grin slips off their face and they grimace, gaze flicking toward the window. Back when they were young, naive, they thought they could break the barrier with Asriel’s help. Although they weren’t disappointed in the actions of the humans - no, disappointment implies that they expected better - Asriel let them down. Disgusting, that even their baby brother was too weak to help. Did he really expect a peaceful life on the surface? Their grand plan - the one for which Chara had given their everything, their _life_ \- failed. 

They got nothing for it. Literally nothing. A blank emptiness that filled them and pushed out their Soul for decades. Hundreds of years. 

Rage sears deeply through their stomach. Anger. That’s a comfort-blanket sensation, and it coils inside their body and around their arms like an old friend. It shoots down to their legs, which tremble in response, and galvanizes them to their feet. They don’t know what they’re going to do, but they have to do something. Celebration is in order. They have a body again. They can feel again. Maybe they’ll go murder something, pull up some weeds, crack a robin’s egg. They’ll figure something out.

With stuttering motions, Chara hefts themself onto their two feet, and flings their arms out for balance when vertigo overwhelms them. They plant both hands on the bed, head bowed and frustration hissing in the back of their skull. They pull in a deep breath, feeling it scrape over their throat and chill their lungs, and push themself back onto their feet. 

Chara nearly overbalances and instinctively windmills their arms, thinking _I’m going to hit my head and die, this is the end_ , but regain their balance and crouch awkwardly in the middle of the room, hands spread wide and mouth soundlessly open. They hold that position for a couple of seconds, making sure no other body parts are going to rebel.

It hits them how dumb they must look, hunched over like that, with wide eyes and a motionless body. Feeling stupid, they shut their mouth and lower their hands and take a step forward. Embarrassment tastes much worse than frustration, they think, curling their mouth. Bleh. 

More sheepishly than they’re quite willing to admit, they stomp out onto the hall and down to the kitchen. They’re thankful for the carpeted floors, but they also don’t care. Because they can take whoever would come to investigate them. They’re a killing machine.

Thankfully, Toriel still keeps the knives in the same place - right at her eye level, so of course far out of the reach of Frisk’s tiny body. Grumbling quietly but keeping their ears peeled for any sign of Toriel waking up (maybe they don’t want to kill her _just_ yet), they heft themself uncoordinatedly onto the counter and wobble along the countertop until they can prise the door open and pull out their favorite knife. Chara still can’t claim perfect control over Frisk’s hands, but even Frisk’s fingers remember very well how to hold a knife after years of Chara’s influence. So while their balance on the countertop is shaky, at least they’re not in danger of accidentally stabbing themself or something equally stupid. 

Officially, it’s the knife used for slicing snail pie, but Chara runs their fingers along the side and remembers a much happier use for this knife, several lifetimes ago, as the True Knife. Chara slides the point of the knife absently over their knuckles as they think, a mental checklist running through their brain. Of course there’s BODY in big letters at the top, and they check off that box and watch its huge red imaginary letters dissolve with satisfaction. Next on their to-do list is “acquire knife,” check, then “murder human race.” 

That last box needs some expanding. A game plan would be nice. They hop off the counter and the impact jars up their knees, a pleasant reminder of their success. They need some Boss Monster souls if they’re going to make headway, but fortunately there’s an ample supply that visits every Friday, so that won’t be a huge problem, at least, especially with the element of surprise. Plus, there’s all that empathy and kindness that monsters have, crippling all of their judgements. Ha, what a house full of _losers_. 

Still, they’re not all weak. The fish especially. Chara doesn’t particularly want to test their ability to Reset with fire, so maybe they can pick her off indirectly. Chara should get someone else to do the dirty work for them. Preferably a human. It would be great to reignite war - and besides, the humans would deserve the blame, anyway. 

Snorting, Chara huffs back to Frisk’s room. Their brain races with half-baked ideas, but despite their eagerness to explore with their body, their _new body_ , they force themself to lie down. One of the shortcomings of human bodies is that they need insignificant little things like sleep. 

The lights are still off, but Chara’s brightly-colored eyes are exceptional at straining in the dark. Chara glances around again unseeingly, idly twirling the knife between their fingers. After the knife slips and gashes along their wrist, Chara swears and stashes the knife temporarily in one of the belt loops of Frisk’s pants. Useless pacifistic clothes don’t have any sheaths, like _sensible_ clothes would. Chara looks at the dark blood running down their arm, shrugs, and falls asleep. That’s a problem for future-Chara to deal with. 

 

Chara wakes slowly. With the sunlight filtering through the windows of Frisk’s room, Chara can see much better - turns out Frisk’s wallpaper is not just a bunch of dull grays, like they saw last night. (Yes, so Chara should already know this, they’d spent the same several months here that Frisk had, but. They were plotting. It wasn’t like they could plot at the forefront of Frisk’s mind. Stealth was key. Besides, looking out Frisk’s eyes and feeling their boundless affection for nearly everything got draining.)

Frisk’s room is remarkably similar to their own, back Underground, but different in key ways that set Chara’s hair on end. From beneath their covers, they let their eyes run along the toys they despised, across the photo frame they’d left on the counter, across the closet which still undoubtedly contains shirts in hundreds of colors. The bookshelf is different, though. It’s lined with physics and plant books. 

The child pulls a face. They shuffle out of bed, yawning, and wrap their blanket around them as they stumble toward the window. They take a moment to soak up the light streaming in through the windows. Outside, in Asgore’s garden, a robin chirps good morning, and the flowers bloom softly in response. 

They flip the bird off and slump down on Frisk’s desk, willing the dumb feathered animal to _shut up_ and stop being so noisy. Chara jams their knuckles into their temples, trying to coerce the massive sleep deprivation headache into _not_ slamming against their skull. They wallow in self-pity, groaning quietly to themself. Chara hadn’t forgotten this part of having a body, necessarily, the wracking pains. But they can still wish that the pain would find someone else to torment. They forgot what a nuisance headaches were while possessing Frisk, because they preferred to let Frisk take the damage instead. It was only fair. Their body, their pain. 

Right as their headache starts to lessen under the wrath of Chara’s knuckles, someone knocks at the door. Pain slams into their head with renewed vigor. 

Chara bites their lip on the urge to scream and slams their head once against the desk, summoning the motivation to get up. 

“Frisk! Toriel!” Papyrus’s eager voice sounds from outside the house. He knocks again, loud enough to rattle dust off the top of the doorframe. “Hello, friends! Would you two like to participate in a snowball fight? It snowed again last night!”

Chara drags themself toward the door and restrains themself from shoving the door open. Good thing they didn’t, they think, peering out the door, they’re not ready to kill Toriel just yet, and that forceful of a motion would’ve sent the doorknob straight into and up her ribcage. 

“Good morning, my child,” Toriel smiles at them, entirely unaware of their less-than-innocuous train of thought. 

Chara bares their teeth at her, still trying to work out how smiles work, and rest their hand on the doorknob. They can feel a bedhead scraping over their scalp. “Morning,” they say through gritted teeth. The word scratches awkwardly over their dry throat and they gag inadvertently.

“My child?” Toriel yelps, at once alarmed, and kneels in front of Chara. They resist the urge to lean away. The concern shining out of her eyes makes them uncomfortable. And _besides_ , it’s not really for them. 

Chara stomps on the strange feeling welling up in their gut and smothers it. It’s a strange sort of bloodthirsty excitement. They can’t _wait_ to slash her innocent angelic face. “Don’t feel well,” they say, sticking out their bottom lip like Frisk used to do. Disgusting. It’s been so long since they had to act human that they’ve nearly forgotten how.

“Did you sleep poorly, Frisk?” Toriel asks, eyebrows furrowing deeper in concern. Chara swallows a wince at the name.

“Everthin’ all right in there?” Sans calls from outside the door. They can hear his foot tapping against the porch even from inside the house, and Chara squashes, with no small amount of difficulty, the hateful hiss that bubbles in their throat. _That comedian_. 

“We are fine,” Toriel responds without taking her eyes off of Chara’s. “Allow us a moment, please.” 

Sans mutters some sort of affirmation through the walls. Chara intentionally does not roll their eyes. “‘m fine,” they say, adding a yawn for good measure. There’s no way they can deal with Papyrus’s energy without stabbing him. Or his brother. Well, they’re gonna get Sans at some point, but not now. Frisk’s body is rebelling against them, almost as stubborn as the Soul Chara’s got half of. They can’t even curl their toes on command. Why are Frisk’s toes the most stubborn part of their body, _how_ does that make any sense? “Just gonna sleep in today.” 

“Very well....” Toriel does not look certain. “Is there anything you would like?” 

“No,” Chara tries to say, but the words scrape painfully over their throat, and even with their abnormally high pain tolerance they almost wince. Instead, they shakes their head, intent on not speaking ever again ever. Their messed-up throat was probably the result of all that determination Chara was draining from Frisk. So Frisk got sick? Good. They deserved it. 

Chara jerks a thumb over their shoulder to their room wordlessly, and before Toriel can protest further they stumble into their room and close the door. They shuffle around their room and depress the bed so that the springs creak and Toriel believes they’ve gone back to sleep. They hear the door open, and Papyrus says something in a high-pitched tone that makes their teeth curl, he’s so _annoying_. 

After several minutes of muted conversation, Toriel closes the door behind her, and Chara can hear her sitting in her reading chair. So she took that old chair aboveground, huh. Vaguely, they wonder if that chair’s still got their doodle of a golden flower etched on the back left leg. 

Chara opens their eyes - Frisk’s eyes? or are the eyes theirs now? - and try taking deep breaths. The air still gouges at their throat. Irritated, Chara throws their hands in the air and resign themself to drinking tea for the next fifteen years. 

With an irritated huff that’s more exasperation than actual air, they hop on the bed and let their head fall against the wall. Quietly, though. Toriel’s sitting in the other room, probably rocking back on her chair and reading some book about some stupid mollusks. 

Hate is something they’re used to. They felt that even when Soulless - human and monster Souls are similar in one regard, that they’re at least useful for feeling positive emotions, like “love” and “empathy.” Not that Chara needs those emotions. Chara preferred being Soulless, honestly, but this way they have a body. It’s more than an adequate tradeoff. Yes, the physical sensations are new. The pain is new. Chara can’t say they like the pain too much, but hey. They can get used to it. 

Chara wiggles their toes into submission, and pull a face. What a weird and useless set of body parts. All toes are good for is, well, kicking people and getting stubbed. They stretch each of their muscles. Frisk was so weak. 

Tomorrow they’ll figure out that last world-domination checkbox. The best source of LOVE is friends and family, obviously, but outright attacking would not go over well, especially with that stupid perceptive skeleton visiting every day. They’ll have to pick a couple off one by one before jumping in knife-first. 

Chara burrows under the covers and bury their face in a pillow. As much as they hate to admit it, they’re tired. They feel less determination than they’re used to - their own Soul is somewhere else and they only have half of Frisk’s. As much determination as Frisk has, it probably isn’t enough to Reset on its own. So they have to make do with the timeline Frisk gave them. 

All things considered, though, this timeline isn’t terrible. Asgore can’t keep the humans from attacking forever, violent hectic beasts they are. 

Chara relaxes into Frisk’s bed, stretches their fingers and yawns contentedly through Frisk’s damaged throat, and falls back asleep. 

 

Toriel pulls the door open. Papyrus notices pretty much instantly that Frisk isn’t by her side. “Is Frisk all right?” he asks, concerned. 

“I believe they did not sleep well.”

Sans watches her carefully. “They did just recover from a pretty nasty shock to their immune system. They’ll get better soon.”

“I hope so,” Toriel sighs, still looking with concern at where her child had wordlessly retreated into their room, slamming the door behind them.

“The kid’ll be fine,” Sans says, knocking Toriel’s arm with his shoulder. “They’ve been through much worse. I’m sure they’ll feel better in no time.” 

Toriel looks unconvinced. “They seemed quite unwell. Maybe I should stay inside with them.” 

“What’s up with them, just tired?”

“Just tired, I believe.”

“Then let ‘em rest! You gotta take a break every once in a while too, Tori. Come with me and Pap to Grillby’s. I’m sure they wouldn’t f- _risk_ doing anything dumb while you’re out.” 

The pun goes right over her head. “You are right, Sans, in that they are capable of taking care of themself. But...I do not feel right, leaving them alone.”

“We are not going to Grillby’s!” Papyrus leans over and hisses in his ear, words clearly intended only for Sans.

Sans ignores him as Toriel snorts, looking a little bit brighter. “Okay, Tori, if you’re sure. Just gimme a ring if anything goes south.”

“I will, Sans,” Toriel promises. “Now enjoy yourself, both of you.” 

“We will!” Papyrus responds. “We’re still _not_ going to Grillby’s, brother! Because I have standards. Standards that are very much grease and fat-free!” 

Toriel is still laughing when she closes the door.

 

Toriel hums to herself as she pops the shell off of another snail. At this point, she’s quite accustomed to the crack that snaps across the room when the shell comes off and slices through the dead snail’s spine, but Frisk finds it horrifying so Toriel only prepares snail-meals when Frisk is in their room preoccupied with homework or staying after school to help with Undyne’s fencing lessons. Now Frisk is sleeping, so they probably can’t hear her. 

She slides the snail-pie in the oven, humming a little tune as her claws automatically set the timer to 30 minutes. She slides the burnt and battered but functional gloves off her claws - she doesn’t need them, not really, but she sets a good example for Frisk anyway. Frisk, like Sans, has taken up an interest in cooking. But they have zero aptitude for fire magic, so they must see her using an oven safely as often as possible. Toriel replaces the gloves in the cabinet beneath the oven, where they rest with the ten other hand-stitched pairs that Papyrus gave Toriel a couple of weeks ago. For no real reason, as far as she could tell, just because he felt like being nice. 

She seats herself in front of the fire and pulls out her cell phone. She quite enjoys “texting”, even if communication is less personal electronically than face-to-face. For a brief moment, Toriel wishes she could be spectating a snowball match, watching Sans stick clumps of snow in Papyrus’s scarf when he’s not looking, but she pushes the desire to the side. Frisk needs their rest, and she’s not leaving her child alone when they’re still so ill.

Alphys and Undyne are both offline, and have been for quite some time. They’ve both set their statuses to an identical DATE NIGHT!!, so Toriel doesn’t text them. She’s sure they’re enjoying themselves on their own. Instead, she opens Sans’s chat with one practiced motion, opening with a knock-knock joke she’d specifically looked up last night. He responds in kind, of course, and adds to his text message an emoticon: ( :) ) . Says it looks like him. Privately, Toriel thinks it looks astoundingly not like him, but her own personal favorite is ( ( :3 ) so she can’t complain. 

After about twenty rounds of knocking off jokes (hee hee!) Toriel sets her phone aside and eases the oven mitts onto her hands and pulls the pie out of the oven. The pie smells delightful. The perfect blend of slime jelly mixed with crusted, golden dough. The jelly bubbles like the hot springs, and she nods to herself, setting the pie on the windowsill to cool and slipping off her mitts. Cooking with an actual oven has been...an experience, because she is quite used to her fire magic and also quite unaccustomed to these strange units (what on Earth is a Fahrenheit?).

When the pie has cooled sufficiently, she slices a perfect eighth of the pie and levels it onto a plate. Just to be sure, she blows on it a few more times, and sucks out a bit of the heat with a flick of her hand. Satisfied, she leaves the window cracked ajar and the pie balanced neatly next to it, and walks gracefully toward Frisk’s room. “Frisk?” she calls quietly, but there is no response. They are sleeping, then. 

She cracks the door open. The room is still, despite the midafternoon light streaming through the window. Frisk lays curled in their bed, sound asleep. Her heart hurts a bit for her child, looking so tired and weary. She forgets, often, how young they truly are. She leaves the warm slice of pie right next to their bed, sheltered by a ladybug-patterned lampshade, and rests a gentle hand on their forehead before exiting and shutting the door behind her. 

Toriel pauses for a moment against the wall outside, fretting about her child. It is unlike them to sleep for so long. They must have felt severely unwell to oversleep for this extended period of time. 

Something shifts in the bedroom. Two small feet hit the floor. She hears tiny footsteps pad over to the table and she smiles, knowing that her child has found the pie. There’s a clink, like a fork hitting the plate, and the soft sound of chewing.

“Ugh,” the child mutters to themself. “No chocolate?” 

Toriel’s stomach drops abruptly to her feet. That sounded like...Chara? 

She shakes her head, heart pounding furiously. That was Frisk’s voice. Frisk is not Chara. Frisk is _not Chara_. Chara is dead. 

She needs to keep the two separate. So what if her child suddenly likes chocolate? That does not mean anything. 

Then there is the sound of a window opening. She hears them sniff the pie and retch. “How little HP this would heal,” they say musingly, and Toriel hears a note of disdain in Frisk’s voice. There is a shattering like the sound of a plate breaking from inside the room, and the window shuts. Toriel hurries quietly away from the room, and disappears into the living room just before Frisk’s door opens and a head pokes out of the door. 

Toriel sinks back into her chair, panic and anguish welling in her stomach. Do the really dislike her pie that much? How much has her child changed without her noticing? What else has she missed? 

She’s a terrible mother. Her eighth child, and she cannot even properly care for one. 

Heart pounding and eyes stinging, Toriel opens her own window in the kitchen, and to her dismay sees the shattered remains of a plate and piece of pie sprawled across the ground below Frisk’s windowsill. She has fed Frisk snail pie countless times, and they always seemed to enjoy the taste. Had the child been acting? Why would they wish to conceal their dislikes from her? Don’t they...don’t they trust her?

The very thought makes Toriel want to cry like she had when she was a child, but she bites back those thoughts. No more snail pie, then, she decides, straightening her back and tightening her facial expression into a mask. She will show Frisk that she will ensure their comfort. Hopefully they will feel more able to trust her with these things. She has noticed that they do this - they will not tell the truth, will hide their emotions if they are worried about hurting others. It is such an unhealthy habit, but Toriel does not want to confront them about it for fear of making them feel worse. She will simply take into account their change in tastes, and show them that their preferences to not diminish her love for them. 

She sees the rest of pie on the windowsill, the majority still wafting a delicious smell toward her snout from its tin, and her face locks up in stone. But without letting herself doubt, she picks up the tin and drops the remainder gently in the trash can. A pang of loss shoots through her chest. She had been quite proud of that pie, she has so little time to bake since monsterkind emerged surface side. But if Frisk does not like it, then she will let it go. 

Why does she still want to cry?


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chara gets impatient and Papyrus takes the blow.

It’s Friday, a couple of days after Frisk went on vacation, and Chara despises school now even more than they did in their youth like a hundred years ago. The younger children have uniformly decided that Frisk is Best Moderator for their petty disputes, and Chara just. Doesn’t have time for that. The first time a young wisp monster approaches them, leaking strange gaseous...something, Chara hefts themself off Frisk’s feet and flips their notebook so that the page entitled “World Domination” faces downward and sticks it in their pocket with a snapped “What.” Apparently, some human kid took their favorite pet rock, and the kid’s insisting it was all a game. Chara shrugs Frisk’s shoulders noncommittally, irritated at having to stop planning over a stupid rock, and tells the monster to just hit the kid in the face and take the rock back herself. 

The next recess, Monster Kid tries to come talk to them, but Chara doesn’t have time for them either and tells them to do something less-than-pleasant. They’re impressed that the Kid doesn’t start bawling like a child, but they do make a sad face and doesn’t talk to them again. For a couple of hours, at least. They come back afterward spewing some crap about forgiveness and love that reeks so badly of Papyrus it hurts Chara to hear, so they don’t even say anything, they just flip him off. Monster Kid reminds them of Asriel. That only makes them angrier. 

Of course, Monster Kid goes blabbing to Toriel, hiding their pathetic angst and self-doubt under layers of falsified concern. Also as they expected, Toriel’s too much of a coward to confront Chara about it, so they don’t care. She’ll put it down to her baby child feeling unwell, because Frisk would never do anything to harm anyone, ever. They wouldn’t swat a fly, much less try to kill someone. 

Ha.

Chara rolls Frisk’s eyes and hefts their backpack, stomping on the sidewalk as they tromp back to Toriel’s house from school. Monsters still haven’t learned that humans are just terrible creatures. Without exception.

They take a deep breath. Frisk’s throat is mending, thankfully. Sans kept trying to sign at them as he took them home from school yesterday. Of course, Chara’s got no idea how to speak sign language - even if they wanted to learn, their village had no resources for picking up another language like that - so trying to sign back would have been disastrous. They just tapped their head and looked confused and let him draw what conclusions from that he could. He’s suspicious, they’re sure. But they’re Frisk, and his darling Frisk would never do anything wrong. 

Chara evens out their footsteps purposefully as they approach Toriel’s, and wimpily open the door, just like Frisk would do. It’s only after they’ve dropped their backpack in their room that they realize they didn’t knock and only just stop themself from smacking themself in the head. Stupid. Frisk would probably die before forgetting to use their manners. Ugh, this politeness thing is harder than they thought. 

“Hello, Frisk!” Toriel’s voice calls cheerily from the kitchen. 

“Hey,” Chara calls halfheartedly, stopping a “Greetings” before it can escape their throat and scare Toriel witless. “I’m taking a nap.” 

They don’t bother to listen for Toriel’s response, and they just lay down and pass out on Frisk’s bed. 

 

Several hours later, they wake up with a pounding headache and the sound of some useless anime blaring from the TV. 

Chara takes a second to glare at the ceiling, as if the panels have done them a personal wrong, then unenthusiastically clamber to their feet. Social interaction is one of their least favorite things, way down there with getting murdered and hot chocolate that’s gone cold. But it’s what Frisk would do, and besides, they can’t sleep forever. 

As they shuffle down the hallway, they see Alphys and Toriel seated on the couch. Alphys is blabbering excitedly to Toriel about some “Sword Art” thing that looks to have, well, a lot of swords. Undyne’s sitting practically on top of the couch, perched on the headrests and yelling through the phone at Asgore, trying to convince him that “this anime’s not _that_ bad, not violent at all! Promise!” 

Chara takes a deep breath, enjoying the way their throat doesn’t rebel this time, and prepares themself for another night of acting. Ducking out of view, they slip their knife from the homemade sheath tucked in the loop of their jeans and thrust it in front of them, posing dramatically. _Acting_. It’s exhausting and stupid and difficult, but Chara can do it.

 

Papyrus bounds through the door with his brother in tow sometime later, mid-way through the first episode. Chara has curled themself on their mother’s lap - they’re only there because that’s what Frisk would do, the stupid excitement they can feel is bloodlust, _obviously_ \- and pretends to be fascinated with the television so they don’t have to greet the two brothers. 

The night wears on. Toriel strokes their hair, but that’s about the only contact they don’t get tired of. For some reason, Sans keeps leaning over to crack jokes at the protagonists, pointing out plot holes, but Chara’s laughs comes off a bit too sarcastic, so with a weird look he stops soon after. Crap.

Papyrus keeps up a stream of relentless excited comments about the animation and how well the lineart flows, and Undyne bounces off his enthusiasm with comments about the plot. Chara’s sure Undyne stole all her semi-intelligent meta from Alphys, because all Undyne’s good for is beating things up, really. Chara has to bite down on about fifty sniping comments before their tongue starts actually bleeding. 

Their irritation gets more and more noticeable as people keep trying to talk to them. It affects even Alphys, who talks mainly with Undyne. Her smile at sentimental moments turns awkward and more forced. 

Another episode goes by. Frisk’s friends keep checking on Chara, and with each question Chara’s rebuffal grows less and less patient. Alphys inches away from Toriel and Chara. Undyne keeps shooting them worried looks. Sans hasn’t glanced at the television screen in the past ten minutes, instead staring at their reflection in the glossy finish of the cabinets supporting the VCR player. To be honest, it...kind of creeps them out, how he apparently never feels the need to blink. They’d be a lot more worried if they couldn’t see the worry blaring and obvious in his eyes. At least he’s not murderous yet. 

Eventually, Chara gets fed up with fielding concerned questions with a simpering smile and kind words. They have a niceness quota, and even with a Soul, it’s not particularly high. They finally let their irritation bleed into their response to Undyne’s queries and snap, and it feels good, to let off some of their steam. They need to get a punching bag installed in their Dictator room, whenever they achieve that whole world domination thing. Or maybe they can hire someone they can beat up, like Undyne did. How effective would punching a ghost be? Probably not very, but it would feel good anyway, Chara bets.

Toriel shifts uncomfortably. Chara crosses their arms tighter and pointedly doesn’t look at her. If she wants to say something, she’s gonna have to say it, Chara’s not gonna do it for her. 

Two more minutes of anime trickle by - Papyrus is the only one actually watching, and the only one commenting on the video, for that matter - before Toriel speaks up. “My child, would you like to sleep now?” 

They’re tempted to say yes. The discomfort around the room is suffocating, and even Alphys watches for their response, despite the anime playing loudly throughout the room. 

Spite tells them to stay up. If Frisk’s family wants to get rid of them, then they’re not going to budge. “I’m fine,” they respond instead, proud of how steady their voice is. Just ten more minutes, they tell themself, until the end of the episode. In ten minutes they’ll have fulfilled their duties as an actor and they can go to bed with pride. 

Toriel knows that these are key words for “I’m really not fine at all,” but she can’t think of anything else to say when she has no idea what the problem truly is, so she retreats quietly, watching Chara with worried eyes. Chara hunches their shoulders further away from her. _Yeah, try to say something again, Toriel_ , they think. _I dare you_. 

She doesn’t. For some reason, Chara has to push an emotion flavored like disappointment out of their head. What were they hoping for? Her pity? It wouldn’t be for them, anyway. If she were concerned, it would be for Frisk. 

Then, the episode ends. Braving her way through cloying anxiety, Alphys chirps “Who’s up for another episode?”

Undyne opens her mouth to say yes, but then glances at Alphys. Alphys is side-eyeing Chara, and joins the five pairs of eyes awaiting their response. Chara feels that spite welling up in them again and they tamp down on it. They could probably do one more episode, but all this damn worry is grating on their nerves, even though it’s hilarious because they’re worrying over Chara, not Frisk. “By all means,” they say as politely as possible. “But I am going to sleep.”

“Frisk, are you sure that you are feeling well?” 

Chara freezes at the name. They’re not Frisk, and for some unfathomable reason irritation wells up in their stomach at Toriel’s mistake. They’re _sorely_ tempted to shout the truth, frustration exploding from their still-raw throat in a confession, and they open their mouth when they hear - 

“Human, what is wrong?” Papyrus asks. 

Something in Chara snaps. They’re done acting nice, it won’t even _matter_ , they’ll kill him soon anyway. “Don’t call me that!” they yell. 

Papyrus looks bewildered at this sudden outrage. Stupid naive skeleton, didn’t even notice the whole time, too absorbed in his fairy tales. Chara’s not sure how he’s survived this long. Kill or be killed, right? He would never hurt anyone - _has_ never hurt anyone - so he’ll be dead soon. They’re going to enjoy dusting his optimistic smiling skull. 

“I have a name,” they hiss and glare at Papyrus. “My name is Frisk. I’m not just a human!” 

Papyrus’s eyes turn downward. “I am sorry, Frisk,” he says. “I thought...”

“No,” they grit venomously, anger shooting through them at the name. They long to scream that Frisk is dead, if only to tear the worry off their faces and replace it with fear. “You didn’t think. Because you’re too absorbed with your stupid fantasies, living off in your own world, completely unable to tell imagination from reality. Didn’t you think for maybe one second that I’d want to be valued? That I’d want to be called something other than ‘human’? In case you hadn’t noticed, _Papyrus_ , ‘human’ has been used as a curse word for _millenia_! But oh, I’m sorry, did that somehow escape your attention? Did you never stop to think about _me_?” 

It’s very cathartic, being angry. Snapping at small wide-eyed children only makes Chara feel better for a limited amount of time. But tearing the happiness and optimism off that skeleton’s face - it’s much more satisfying. Maybe they’ll keep him around in their dictatorial office as a verbal punching bag. It’s about all he would be good for. 

Silence drags on after their words. Papyrus stares at them with wide eyes. For the first time since anime night began, his chest isn’t facing the television screen. Chara breathes heavily, watching the horror and shock grapple for dominance over his features. It’s fascinating, the way he _feels_ so much, for everyone, and they’d almost stay and watch except they’re a tad afraid Undyne’s going to spear them in the chest, with the way she’s snarling at them and twitching her fingers. “Mom, I’m going to sleep,” they growl quietly.

And they leave, dragging their hand-knit blanket from Asgore behind them, which swirls around them as they stride out like a cape. 

An awkward silence hovers over the room like a sullen cloud, broken only by the sound of Frisk’s door opening and slamming shut. 

 

“Pap, they didn’t mean it,” Sans says as soon as the door closes, but Papyrus shakes his head. 

“No, they are right,” he responds, and his voice is jagged a little bit around the edges. “They have a name. I should have used it. I cannot keep pretending everything is all right with them when it clearly is not.” 

“Papyrus-” Sans starts to say.

But Undyne cuts him off with a sharp “Papyrus, no. That was really fuc- _freaking_ rude of them.” 

“I hurt them, Undyne.” Papyrus wraps his scarf a bit tighter around his neck and hugs his knees to his chest. “I kept calling them human, as if they weren’t special. I should have thought about their feelings.”

“Papyrus, you’re being ridiculous,” Undyne snaps. Her eyepatch glows menacingly. “Frisk knows you love them. That little outburst was completely uncalled for.”

“I do not know that they do know. I did not show my affection well enough.” 

“Oh my God, Papyrus, you show your affection for literally everyone! They’re just in a bad mood!” Undyne throws up her hands. A spear embeds itself in the ceiling. Toriel glares at Undyne, but refrains from commenting. “Papyrus - Pap, look. The kid’s in a bad mood. I’m sure they didn’t mean it. They think you’re the best, and so do I! So cheer up, Pap!”

“Do you really think so?” Papyrus asks quietly, and the hope in his voice cheers Undyne hugely. 

“Of course I do!”

“You always make Frisk smile,” Toriel adds serenely. She will stink-eye Undyne for the gaping blue hole in her ceiling later. 

“Y-yeah! And y-you always make me f-feel better, even if my j-jokes aren’t funny!” 

“Thank you, everyone,” Papyrus smiles quietly. “I feel better. And...I think that you all are amazing too!” He grabs the nearest monster, which happens to be Undyne, and pulls her into a tight hug. She stands up with him still attached to her stomach, and lifts him over her head in a flattery suplex that literally shakes all the walls in the ground level of Toriel’s house.

“Ow,” he mutters, but he is still smiling then Toriel is pulling both of them into a warm hug. 

Finally, Toriel sets them both down. “I g-guess that’s the end of Anime Night,” Alphys says despondently, fiddling with the remote and staring at her feet. “I-it really seemed l-like...like they didn’t, uh, enjoy t-that...”

“Yeah, it was weird. Something’s wrong with ‘em,” Undyne asserts. “That was totally out of hand.” 

“They are simply tired,” Toriel posits, seating herself back in her chair. 

“What they just said was horrible and rude.”

“Perhaps they are simply stressed. I am sure that they meant nothing by it.” 

“Those were not the words of the ‘simply stressed’,” Undyne points out coldly. “They should never do that, ever, not even if they’re tired.” 

Toriel arches an eyebrow at her. “You must forgive them one small slip.”

“That wasn’t _one small slip_ , Toriel. That was them tearing into Papyrus for literally no good reason.” 

“We all have different methods of releasing our stress.”

Undyne stares at her, openmouthed. “Are you serious? Frisk has never tried to do that before, something’s seriously _wrong_! And besides, they were totally out of hand, yelling at Papyrus like that.”

“They do not have an easy time, Undyne, acting as ambassador. You have seen the vultures with whom they must deal.”

“I know it’s hard, but that’s beside the point, they shouldn’t’ve -”

Toriel cuts right through her indignant words, tone icy. “I can assure you that diplomacy takes a good measure of skill. I would not expect you to understand the strain they are under, hoisting the fate of everyone on their shoulders.” 

Undyne reels backward, then snarls “I _know_ how difficult tact is, Asgore’s been teaching me, but if Frisk thinks that’s a good application of their _diplomacy_ they need to think again. What’s Papyrus ever done against them?”

“He could not see that they were hurting. We were all aware of their problems, evidently, save for him.”

Papyrus winces. Undyne shakes her head like she can’t believe what she’s hearing. “Toriel, you can’t defend your kid for this. I get that they were stressed, but that’s a terrible way of coping. They should at least apologize.”

“Frisk was merely expressing their feelings, and I am afraid it is you who is out of line if you deign to judge my child in such a heartless manner. Besides, who are you to dictate healthy coping measures? When you are upset, you elect to fight a ghost until your destruction makes you feel better.”

“Yeah, I know what works for me, because _I don’t hurt anyone while I’m venting_! I’d never yell at someone like that without due reason. That was totally wrong of the kid and they need to apologize!” 

Toriel levers herself to her feet. Alphys huddles into the couch, and Sans rests a hand on her shoulder, the lights in his eyes flickering. When Toriel speaks, her tone is low and dangerous. “Perhaps they spoke from their heart, did you not consider that? It could be that they find the title human to truly be degrading.” 

“Then they should have brought it up with Papyrus reasonably, not screaming at him in the middle of the living room!”

“You expect too much of my child,” Toriel hisses, curling her claws into fists. “I could not expect you to understand what it is to feel small, insignificant and nameless.” 

“Hey,” Papyrus tries, though the effect of his words is dampened by the horrified trembling of his skull. “Please don’t -”

“You don’t know _anything_ about where I came from!” Undyne roars. “You don’t know who I was when I was a kid!” 

“I can make a very educated guess,” Toriel says coldly. “I cannot imagine that you have changed much since then, if you would be so insensitive as to brazenly badmouth a child without lending empathy to their situation!”

“Hey!” Papyrus yells, physically launching himself off the couch and stepping between Undyne and Toriel. His eyes are wide and alarmed, and hold an anxiety far from the contentedness of earlier. “Please do not fight!”

“Pap, the kid was completely unjustified toward you, why are you defending _her_?” Undyne hisses. She directs her words toward Papyrus, but her glare remains trained on Toriel. 

“I am not going to take a side in this,” Papyrus announces shakily. “But I do not like to see my friends fight! Please, could we discuss this later?” 

Undyne takes a breath. “Sure. You know what, fine, we can reconvene later. How does that sound?” 

Toriel raises two indignant eyebrows and turns on Papyrus. “You would let Undyne badmouth Frisk like this? Will you really ignore your friend’s callousness?” 

“Toriel, Undyne, please, let’s postpone this discussion for another time! It is clear that neither of you are feeling well, and frankly, neither am I -”

“Wait, wait, wait. _Your_ friend? So I’m not your friend then, huh, _Your Majesty_?” Undyne snaps. Her lips curl into a disdainful smile. “You wield fire, sure, but all that ice in you is gonna keep pushing people away.” 

And with those words, Undyne pivots on her heel, tearing a hole in the fabric of Toriel’s carpet, and slams the door shut behind her. 

 

Frisk jolts into consciousness again. This time, they definitely feel something, and it’s a terrible sharp stabbing pain that tears through every part of their body, and they wish that they were back at that nice numbness phase. Disjointedly, they realize they are screaming, and think that’s odd, because it doesn’t feel like their mouth is doing anything except hurting a lot. The pain blazes through them, as if they’re being ripped apart and reworked and dislocated and mashed back together, and they try to detach their feelings from their body as the fire works over them but every time they pull away something yanks them back. Is this hell, for what they’ve done?

Frisk can move their fingers, they realize suddenly, and they try to flex them but their fingers are already moving. Kind of sideways, though, like something’s rearranging their hands knuckle by knuckle, ripping the fibers of their fingernails off their hands and reattaching them in different directions, like a cut-up child’s toy sewn together incorrectly. 

They double over, convulsing and trying to keep their intestines on the inside instead of flying off into outer space because it feels like their appendix has grown pointy ballet shoes and has decided to perform the cha-cha slide across in the inside of their stomach lining, tearing it apart into tiny ribbons that remind Frisk of a faded ribbon, ha ha they think disjointedly, and suddenly it stops. 

The fire in Frisk’s stomach stops like someone’s thrown cool water over it, and the pain fizzles out, and instead of screaming they gasp in huge breaths through a torn throat that doesn’t quite work properly. 

For the first time, they dare to open their eyes, and then they’re not quite sure if they even opened their eyes in the first place because everything around them is pitch black. Their first thought is blindfold, maybe there was a reason they thought of the faded ribbon, but when they clap their hands to their eyes they feel nothing but their own eyelids and a scar running horizontally across their forehead, As Frisk probes at it with delicate fingerpads, the wound knits itself back together. They miraculously, somehow, don’t hurt at all. Actually, now that they’re not yelling, they can feel little cuts and gashes all over their body knitting together with a strange prickling sensation.

Gingerly, Frisk pushes themself into a sitting position, and waves a hand in front of their eyes. Nope, not a single flicker of motion. 

“Hello?” they call into the void, but their throat is too sore and nothing comes out except a strangled cough. Frisk doubles over for a second, their throat intent on throwing itself out from between Frisk’s teeth. Then they swallow, and swallow again, and with more success call “Hello?”

No one responds. The nothingness swallows any echoes of their voice. Frisk’s stomach lurches unpleasantly at the memory of the last time they appeared alone in a mysterious place. But they shove the feeling down. There aren’t any golden flowers here, and Frisk choses to take that as a good sign. “Hello?” they call again. 

They feel...somehow much more hopeful than they were in Chara’s presence. Frisk stumbles forward blindly, hands outstretched. Then they giggle a bit, just a tiny snicker, thinking about what they must look like, staggering around uselessly with their arms waving in front of their face. Maybe they should be a zombie for next Halloween. Are there any zombie monsters as part of the Underground? They should ask Asgore when they see him next.

If they see him next, that is. 

Frisk sits down on the nothingness that supports their feet and wraps their arms around their knees. They’re not actually sure if they’ll see Asgore again. Or Toriel, or Papyrus, or Sans or anyone. 

Frisk misses home so much it feels like there’s a hole gaping in their chest, and they want to cry, but they don’t. They know it’s bad for them, not crying, but they suck in the tears anyway and sit up straight and stick their chin out and glare a small defiance to the void. 

A couple of minutes (hours?) pass, and Frisk lowers themself into a lying position. They imagine that there are stars hovering above their head, and imagine counting them, and imagine showing the constellations to Sans. He’d really wanted to go stargazing with Papyrus and Frisk, they remember. Frisk hopes he goes with Papyrus while they’re gone.

They pull out their camera and look through the lens. At first, everything is black; then they remember to pry off the lens cap, flicking themself gently in the forehead with a small snort. Frisk reapplies their eyes to the lens. 

Vague pictures show up in various shades of gray. Everything is murky and intangible all around them, and toward the ceiling is pure white. When they direct the camera toward their feet, though, they can make out a blob of shifting shades. They zoom in and the image resolves into several overlapped concentric circles that move unsteadily around each other, shifting in radius even as they watch. Frisk tries zooming out and zooming back in, crouching to their feet and turning in circles as they tilt their head to try and get a better view, but the image remains indiscernible. 

Stuffing the camera back in their Box, Frisk decides the void isn’t too bad. Sure, it’s big and scary, but it hasn’t tried to kill them yet, and that’s better than a lot of the things they’ve met in their short life. They pat the floor of the void and smile at it, and tell it that it’s doing a great job of being nothing. 

Then the floor is suddenly distinctly not nothing, bone-white and not black. 

Frisk jerks to their feet, eyes spinning through their new chalky surroundings. “Hello?” they call again. 

Something is behind them. Frisk takes a deep breath and slowly, deliberately, turns. They pray to every star they’ve ever learned the name for that Chara does not stand in front of them. 

Indeed, Chara does not stand in front of them. 

Instead, thousands and thousands of skeletal hands stretch into the darkness. Each hand clatters against itself, clatters against another hand, clatters in on itself. They jangle and clack and create a horrible cacophony of calcium-on-calcium that makes Frisk think of a chorus of out-of-tune xylophones beating on the discordant chord as loud as they can. Frisk claps their hands over their ears, the noise sudden and atrocious against the pressing silence of before. 

Then something else draws Frisk’s attention, the only black in a room full of blinding white. The being is tall and thin, stretched between nothing like a thin spiderweb. It is black, a black that gathers all the light in the room and swallows it. The nothing spins and stretches and assumes a humanlike form, one that could pass for human if the observer looked at them through a funhouse mirror. Frisk read about black holes in their physics books, and the being is what they imagine when they think of that great expanse of void. 

The figure turns, and the hands go very very still. It has a kind of a robe made of the black. As Frisk watches, more and more unsettled, the substance that makes up the robe drips off itself then rolls back up and drips again. Some of the gooey robe escapes and lands on the floor, but it seeps into the floor or flies back upward to cycle back out again. The figure’s eyes are darker yet darker, and their grin is painted on jagged. It has two hands of its own, and each finger is spread out and stretched, too little bone scraped over too much nothing, until the fingers look more like white spaghetti than phalanges. 

Frisk watches the figure, unsettled, and the figure watches them back. They open their mouth to say a frightened hello, but the being recoils from the movement and the hands clatter and jerk and swarm toward Frisk like a pack of vultures and they let out a tiny shriek and jolt backward. 

But nothing happens. 

Frisk waves hello. They don’t trust their voice. Then they stand completely still. The hands get touchy and ring around Frisk’s head, and they want to curl in a ball again but they don’t let themself. 

It’s a skeleton, Frisk realizes, before their Soul flashes a warning and flies out of their body. 


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Their panicked brain draws a blank on answers. The figure’s attacks are too fast to think about anything but dodging, much less figure out a successful way to Act. Their fear of dying, compounded with the fact that they don’t know if their save points back in the Underground still even apply and death could mean _death_ , actual real and permanent, turns their breath stale and fearful inside their mouth. Outside their throbbing eyes they search out the figure, trying to work out some way to plead for mercy that doesn’t involve forming words through short panting breaths - but the figure watches them dispassionately from inside its halo of protection, not an ounce of pity or regret on its face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay in updates, guys. I kinda lost motivation over the past few weeks. That's the thing about writing 140k+ words, you look back on the earlier parts and shake your head about how bad they were. It's taken a lot of mental energy for me to convince myself to read them over and not be disappointed. 
> 
> On a happier note, I'm determined to see this story through. Don't worry - whatever happens, it will finish. In the meanwhile, enjoy the update!

Frisk doesn’t even get a moment to size up the new arrival before a bone slices narrowly over their head. Then another, past their ear, and Frisk’s experience dodging attacks is the only thing that saves them from a femur embedded in their shoulder. They stumble backward, taken utterly aback by the attack, trying to maintain their balance amongst the swarm of bones barreling toward them from the figure’s outstretched hands. Stumbling over their own feet in shock, Frisk leaps to the side, only to find bones coming in a line, one after the other, white and blue and white and white and white and blue and it takes every ounce of concentration Frisk has to weave between the intricate patterns the bones create. 

Then they’re suddenly from the other direction, faster and faster. Frisk tilts and jumps through the bones, avoiding damage by the breadth of a fingernail but then there’s a cage rising around them and Frisk whips through the quickly decreasing crack in the walls and right into a line of blues that tear painful gashes in their arm. 

At the sensation of skin tearing, the hands begin to move and jangle and crash against each other, excited at making first contact. The racket is nearly deafening, the shatteringly loud clacks of bone on bone, coupled with the whooshes past their face and their own heartbeat thudding wildly in their ears. Their lungs beg for oxygen, for rest - their muscles still remember the blackness seeping all through their body and draining them of everything - but there is no respite. 

There are already bones whizzing toward their face and they bend backward, nearly folding in half, watching with wide eyes as the lowest in the stream of attacks brushes past the hairs of their nose. Then there are bones plummeting from the sky, and Frisk snaps back onto their feet, windmilling their arms a bit. The attacks scream toward them from hands shaped like guns - index fingers splitting to form cylinders like barrels, thumbs dislocated to make triggers. The bullets criss-cross in a mobile maze of weaponry that make Frisk’s eyes dance and forms a headache like stones in their temples. 

Frisk tries to watch the sky and ends up forgetting about their feet, and the third time they trip over a twitching shard of middle finger they fall and the rest of the hand spear them in the ribs. Adrenaline jolts them to their feet before their brain can register the punctures in their stomach and provides them only with a mantra of _keep moving, keep moving, keep moving_.

Then, the attacks change - the shards of bone embedded in the ground whiz upward, reforming hands into perfect gleaming sculptures, then splinter into pieces and descend upon Frisk’s head like a thousand tiny white bombs that shatter in all directions and reform upon hitting the ground. Frisk curses to themself, a single vile word that Toriel would be horrified to hear, and leaps out of the way of the first impact point, hopping over the fragments that explode and whiz back in the other direction to reform the hand, and Frisk would watch fascinated except there are so many hands and so many explosions that blinking means shards like knives drawn across their body. Fragments of fingers embed themselves inches under Frisk’s skin, each one deep enough to sting terribly, but they yank themself back out after several seconds to reform, leaving Frisk with nothing but a cut in their skin and a little bit less health.

Their panicked brain draws a blank on answers. The figure’s attacks are too fast to think about anything but dodging, much less figure out a successful way to Act. Their fear of dying, compounded with the fact that they don’t know if their save points back in the Underground still even apply and death could mean _death_ , actual real and permanent, turns their breath stale and fearful inside their mouth. Outside their throbbing eyes they search out the figure, trying to work out some way to plead for mercy that doesn’t involve forming words through short panting breaths - but the figure watches them dispassionately from inside its halo of protection, not an ounce of pity or regret on its face. 

Frisk is working desperately through options when they trip and fall for the fifth time, a crack like breaking shooting through their leg. Frisk isn’t sure they can take another blow. Their Soul is already weakened from being literally split in half. “Please,” they choke, watching the hands above with trepidation, certain it won’t help one bit.

The bombs stop exploding, the hands stop jittering, and the silence against their ears is as white and featureless as the world around them. 

Frisk chances a look upward, fighting against their body to uncurl. Above them, a gallery of thousands of hands stretch far over their head, each hoisting a finger toward them with damning accusation. They spend a few seconds trying to control their breathing, the painful breaths that drag against their throat, then pull themself off the ground. Except one of their legs is nonfunctional. But a small thing like a dulled leg isn’t going to stop them, so they jolt upward and balance on one foot. 

Reflexive tears sting at their eyes as they tentatively test putting weight on their leg. It doesn’t work - frustrated, Frisk finds themself once more on the ground. 

With a hiss of breath, Frisk gives up fighting that particular futile battle and focus instead on watching the skeleton’s expression, searching for any clues that he’s going to resume the fight. Its face remains immobile and signless. Carefully, very carefully, they reach into their Box and pull out a Monster Candy. They unwrap it slowly, cautiously keeping their movements even and deliberate, and pop it in their mouth.

They can’t hold back a sigh of relief as the healing magic from the candy diffuses through their body and relieves the pressure on their ribcage. For a second they just hold the wrapper, looking for a trash can before realizing what a stupid thought that is, there’s nothing here but whiteness and Frisk isn’t sure the wrapper would still exist if they dropped it. But they don’t drop it. Littering is mean. They stuff the wrapper in their pocket.

The skeleton is still watching them. Still moving at a snail’s pace, they pull out their option menu and press the flat of their palm against Spare. “I don’t want to fight,” they tell the strange figure roughly, pretending that their arms aren’t trembling with exhaustion. 

The figure tilts its head at them. Then, with a slurping sound like a jelly detaching itself from the ground, a white blob emerges out the top of the mass of black goo. A face appears, unveiling itself diagonally, like the moon waxing from crescent to full. With a snap of bone, two eyes and a mouth jolt open, arranging themselves into a disjointed expression that drips viscous blobs of nothing all over its own face. Cracks web up its face.

Frisk recoils. The face smiles. 

“Please,” they implore the figure, very much not fond of the sinister grin on its face. Their arms are littered with tiny scratches and dents where bones slammed into their body. The figure cocks its head, turning it at an angle impossible to any being with a functional neck. The pose looks like a stop sign that’s been hit by a car and hangs loosely, pathetically over a road. “I don’t want to fight, I just want to go home. Could we just talk, please?”

The figure does not stop staring at them, black eyes motionless. The corners of its mouth curl even further open, and with deliberate intensity, it opens its mouth. 

Instantly, the floor and the walls and the ceiling shriek with static, and Frisk claps their hands over their ears, wincing. The wailing vibrations jar unpleasantly through their body, making everything within them vibrate painfully, jostling their wounds. They shut their eyes against the blurred, nausea-inducing sounds, hoping that when they open their eyes again everything will be still. 

After several long moments, silence returns. Frisk opens one eye to find that the figure has closed its mouth, restoring their surroundings to a quiet gleaming white. 

“Okay,” Frisk says, hesitantly unplugging their ears and reaching into their Box. But they don’t get to say anything else, because the figure is suddenly right in front of them and three animalistic skull heads materialize from nothing and point their gaping maws at them. 

Frisk withdraws their hand from their cell phone and stumbles backward, panic whiting through their brain. The figure’s back is arched over them so that its face stares down into Frisk’s eyes. They can do nothing but watch, horrified, as it opens its mouth again, and its face melts and distorts and twists in all sorts of wrong and unnatural shapes, its eyes bleeding into the corner of its mouth and the cracks on its skull elongating and twisting around the side of its face. Somehow, its form is even more terrifying than before. The blob, still melting and reforming before Frisk’s eyes, holds out both hands with a jerk, and the skulls open their mouths, and Frisk rolls out of the way as a blinding light eviscerates the space where they were a second before. 

Their breathing speeds up, and Chara’s memories interfere with their own. In front of their eyes they see the Final Corridor. When they look down at themself they’re covered in dust, their hands trailing with scattered bits of torn life, and Sans’s jacket rips open and he stumbles out, bleeding _something_ , and they fight back the urge to retch, but they have no time for panic because there are Blasters growling mere feet from them, hovering over their head like their carpal counterparts moments a moment before -

They don’t move fast enough, they can’t. One of the three Blasters burns the bottom of their pajama pants off and takes some of their skin with it, and they cry out in shock and pain and stumble uselessly to the floor. 

The Blasters hover over them like three angels of death, and Frisk is so frightened they cannot cry. They reach with a trembling arm into their cell phone, retrieving that stick they picked up all those months ago after exiting the Ruins. Their first weapon.

Frisk grips the stick tightly. The figure scrutinizes them and still does not move. Above them, the hands point their index fingers at Frisk’s skull and jitter with restrained anticipation. For a few moments, the clattering of phalanges is the only sound in the room, but then Frisk twists backward and heaves the stick forward with all their might. 

For a long, horribly long moment, nothing happens. There is no movement save the halt of the stick and the figure cocking its head the other way, still watching them with its uncanny smile. Then, with a snap, the three heads turn to watch the stick; and to Frisk’s shock, the Blasters whiz away from them. 

The fastest one snaps it up, its bony jaw stretching into a warped facsimile of a grin. It drops the stick by Frisk; and when they don’t move to pick it up, still astounded, it nudges their uninjured leg with an insistent maw. With a strange mixture of amusement and disbelief, Frisk picks up the stick with trembling hands and throws it again. 

For a brief moment, they’re terrified that the movement will startle the Blaster into attacking. But no crushing death ray erupts from its mouth. Frisk lets out a tiny, exhausted giggle, watching the stick bounce even further away, and the skulls skidding through the air, growling at one another and dodging toward it. Finally, the second Blaster comes back, beaming as proud as an unattached animal skull can be. 

Their sixth throw they aim toward the slowest Blaster, feeling bad for it - it hasn’t retrieved any of the previous ones successfully and its ear-holes are starting to droop in disappointment. But it’s worth it, to see the Blaster perk up with victory. 

Finally, as the third Blaster finishes its overjoyed victory lap around their head, Frisk reaches up - they can’t stand on this leg, so they stretch grabby hands toward one of the Blasters’ chin - and rubs slightly across underside. It starts to vibrate, and suddenly there are two more Blasters jostling the third out of the way, and Frisk huffs a muted laugh and reaches for the other two as well. 

Suddenly, there’s less Blaster to grab at, more within arm’s reach. All three shrink to about the size of a large dog, and rest their jaws on Frisk’s stomach. After an inevitable second of shocked processing, Frisk laughs, petting at any bone they can reach. 

The vibrating that all three Blasters are doing, which tickles against their stomach, is actually a type of purr. Huh. Frisk can’t help the exhausted smile that curls up their lips at the thought. 

Just when Frisk relaxes enough to scritch along the sides of the Blaster’s mouth, close enough for the skull to bite off their forefinger, the figure materializes right behind the trio of heads. Frisk freezes. Their hand remains immobile, their breathing erratic again, until the whine of a disappointed Blaster snaps them out of their reverie. Frisk keeps their eyes locked on the figure’s skull, but runs their hand against the Blaster’s jaw, causing it to vibrate again and settle contentedly in their lap. Sure, the three skulls against their leg are cutting off all flow to their ankles, but blast Frisk if it isn’t cute, the panting skulls grinning sleepily against their leg. 

At least, until the strange figure decides that enough is enough and snaps its fingers. The whine of the Blasters sounds almost disappointed, this time, and they reluctantly reclaim the air before popping into nonexistence. 

Frisk feels suddenly exposed without the Blasters on their legs. They try to pull themself to their feet, awkward at their own inability to walk, but their leg refuses to move and they trip without ever managing to stand up. The figure kneels in front of them, and Frisk holds the stick in front of their face, scooting backward with one hand and scrabbling against the smooth floor with one socked foot. 

It stays completely still, watching them panic, and slowly raises both hands by their face, palms facing toward Frisk. Normally, of course, Frisk would take the gesture to mean that the figure meant them no harm, but the bone fragments that tore through their skin rather refute that notion.

There’s a long moment in which neither of them move. Then, with a silent huff like a sigh, the figure’s face changes again. Its features become fixed, and the edges of the skull grow sharper and more defined against the blob that constitutes their body. Its jawline is sharp, and its cheekbones kind of jut out of its face. True, its eyes are still fuzzy and not totally clear, but it looks more normal than it did previously. The nothing that whirls around its body stops swirling for a bit to coalesce around its body into the shape of a coat. The tail of the jacket still drips goo, which fizzles into nothing and evaporates back into the lining of said coat, but hey, it’s recognizable as clothing. Frisk thinks it looks like a lab coat.

The hands that circle over Frisk’s head start to swirl around each other instead, looking less like crows. With a flick of the figure’s palm, they spiral into one point. The bones of the fingers start to mutate and elongate and squish together, becoming briefly liquidy and malleable before melding into a single giant set of hands that settle a bit behind the figure’s shoulders and stay there, mirroring its movements. The giant hands tilt and sway gently behind the figure’s back like wings.

Their adrenaline of earlier fades, bit by bit, as the figure assumes a marginally more humanoid form. Frisk dares to prod at their leg, hoping that the disappearance of the Blasters and the hands proves its nonviolent intentions - and the figure doesn’t attack right then, so they might be correct. 

Still. Frisk clutches their stick tighter to their chest. They should probably keep it close at hand.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is a death...?

The fire has died down to nothing more than a pile of embers when Toriel jolts awake. Her living room seems the same - the books still lined on her shelves in the proper places, their spines cobwebbed with the purple-black shadows of night; the Heat Fridge and microwave off and silent, her slippers neatly against the chair, right where she’d left them. Rain still patters soothingly against the windowsill. Hopefully, she thinks through a fuzzy brain, the rhythm will help her child sleep.

She nearly jumps out of her fur when her phone vibrates again, the noise of metal against wood indecently loud in the nighttime silence. Working around the thudding pulse in her hands and her head, Toriel fumbles for her glasses, trying not to break through the lenses with a careless finger. Her phone buzzes again, shifting a bit toward the edge of the table, but Toriel grabs it mid-bid-for-freedom.

“Toriel?” says Asgore’s voice, and Toriel is sorely tempted to hang up then and there. It’s about midnight and her eyes are closing of their own accord. Mutinous little organs. 

“What is it, Dreemurr?” she snaps quietly, shooting a look toward Frisk’s room. Thankfully, they seem to still be asleep - but that doesn’t change the fact that he was inconsiderate enough to call her after midnight, especially when her child has been so unwell. 

“I am sorry to disturb your rest,” he says, his deep voice uncertain. For a brief moment, she feels a pang of regret, but squashes it insistently. “But I found something...alarming.” 

“What could possibly be so alarming at midnight?”

“There is something in my garden, Toriel,” he responds. There’s a quaver in her voice that makes her think maybe he’s got a good reason for calling. 

“Well, will you tell me what it is?” There’s certainly no dry note in her voice. Nothing even resembling a sense of humor. 

“Not over the phone. Truthfully, I...do not know what to do.” 

Toriel pinches the bridge of her snout with her free hand. It’s hard to be the brains of an entire kingdom. “I will be there in five minutes,” she replies, and hangs up before he can say anything else. She stands, stretches, and stalks irritably to grab her coat from the rack. 

 

The rain has abated by the time Toriel reaches Asgore’s castle, though the moisture lingers heavy in the air. Toriel shakes out her entire body before knocking on the door, pointedly unabashed at the drenching his welcome mat receives. It’s decorated with flowers. Oh well, she thinks, viciously satisfied. He probably never waters _those_ flowers anyway, he shouldn’t mind. 

Asgore responds almost immediately. His hair is dishevelled, his robe is rumpled and soggy - clearly, he’s been awake for some time. “Thank you for coming so quickly.” 

She humphs at him. “What did you find that was so devastatingly important it could not wait seven hours?” 

“Dust,” he responds quietly, clicking the door shut behind her and hurrying toward the back of the castle. 

Toriel has set her coat on the rack before her mind processes his words. She blinks, then gasps, “What?”. Irritation shelved, she follows him through the winding hallways of the bottom floor. 

Asgore does not respond until he has opened the door to his garden. “I found dust,” he says, voice subdued. “On the flowers. I meant to study the stars, but I found...well. I have not touched it.”

Asgore’s garden is beautiful, even in the shade of night, dotted with clusters of golden, purple and red flowers that gleam somehow through the faint moonlight, lined with streams of trickling water and peppered with uncannily green leaves. His garden is a peaceful coexistence of both monster and human flowers (a wonderful metaphor for Asgore’s goals, a part of Toriel’s mind notes detachedly, before she shoves the affectionate thought away), and even more than that, a harmonious partnership. The monster flowers that eat subterranean insects, she sees, are stationed by the more delicate human plants as mosquito-catchers. 

It would be almost perfect, even to her cynical eyes, save the powder sprinkled on the blooms by Asgore’s side.

Toriel kneels immediately by the plants, her hands hovering uncertainly over their leaves. “Whose...?” she asks, terrified of the answer.

“I do not know,” Asgore responds from behind her. He moves next to her, a respectful distance away, around the side of the same bunch of flowers. In the background, the water of his garden keeps flowing, unceasing. “I only found this several minutes before I called you.”

“Who would have been targeted?”

“Well, I cannot help but remember the threats made to Papyrus, Frisk, Undyne and myself, by the anonymous senders who harassed Frisk earlier this month.” 

Toriel bites back a curse. Instinct stops it in her mouth - although Frisk is not beside her, having a child around again has quite stopped the habit. “Are they all right?” 

He shrugs helplessly. “I do not know.”

“Call Undyne.” Her hands are already reaching for her pocket. 

She knows her child is fine, is alive, she saw them sleeping before she left for Asgore’s. No need to call them. Instead, she dials Sans’s number without conscious thought. Four rings, each longer than the last, before he picks up.

“Tori?” he asks, yawning. Toriel shudders out a sigh of relief at the sound of his voice. She can’t quite respond, feeling the mere sound of his voice soothe her rattled nerves, and the silence drags on. “Hey, Tori, what’s wrong?” 

She can almost see him sitting up from the couch, eyes alarmed. “I am all right, Sans,” she manages, shaking away reassured tears before they can even form. What a silly old woman she is, worrying so much. “Make sure Papyrus is...is still asleep?” 

He inhales a little too quickly for the intake to be a yawn, and then a _thump thump thump_ that are undoubtedly his footsteps propelling him off the couch and up the steps. Into the intermediary, she hears Undyne’s strong voice issuing loudly from Asgore’s phone. Despite the bitter resentment toward Undyne that she can still feel against the back of her throat, at least Undyne is safe. 

Through her receiver, the footsteps stop and she faintly hears a door creak open. Then Sans’s voice returns, still worried. “He’s fine, he’s - Tori, what’s going on? Are you okay?” 

“I am fine. We...Asgore and I uncovered something alarming in his garden.” Toriel shoots him a glance, wondering if she should explain, but he’s telling Undyne to check on Alphys and not paying a smidgen of attention to her. She has no doubt Undyne has his confidence, just as Sans has hers. “It looks like dust, Sans.” 

Sans swears violently, then shuts the door and swears again, quieter this time. Through the static of the call, she can hear Papyrus snoring. “Whose?”

“We do not yet know. Asgore is calling Undyne and Alphys to ensure that they are well. Frisk is still sleeping, and you and Papyrus are now accounted for. I will call you when we have discovered more, but for now...” she sighs crackling feedback into the receiver. “Well. I will let you know.”

“You want my help, Tori?”

She hesitates for a moment. Asgore would not protest - he and Sans have bonded over gag Christmas gifts and failed cooking experiments. He would have no problem accepting Sans’s assistance. 

But Sans’s voice sounds crusty and tired, and he never dealt well with bad news - either too flippant or too serious, depending on the time of day. So instead she says “No, we will be fine,” and with a final good night, she hangs up. 

Asgore hangs up shortly after, hands oversized and clumsy around such a small device. He should really commission Alphys for a more suitable phone, but protests whenever she offers, insisting she turns her efforts toward his people instead. “Alphys and Undyne are well.”

“As are Sans and Papyrus.” 

The dust, scattered thinly on the bristling tops of the inky purple crocuses, glistens like teardrops against the moonlight. “Who could have done this?” Asgore asks quietly. “I had hoped we had found peace.” 

“I do not know.” Her eyes track through the grass carefully. “But there are no signs that there was a fight. I cannot believe that this was a peaceful death, but...”

She picks up some of the dust, gently, and lets it trail through her fingers. It’s remarkably fine for monster dust. Perhaps one of the more gaseous species of monster - she will contact the Whimsuns as soon as the sun rises. Already, dread coils in her stomach at the thought. It reminds her of acting as monarch during the war against humans, and the comparison makes her feel sick to her stomach. Gods, how she’d hoped that she had left loss behind when moving to the surface. Her friends, her family, her _children_ \- it seems she is doomed to outlive them all. 

A sigh from Asgore snaps her blessedly from her reverie. He stands. There are two undignified grass stains dotting his knees, but he does not brush them off. Several tiny particles dot his kneecaps. Toriel looks away.

They spend several moments looking out over the garden, wordless. The particles sprinkled throughout the garden weigh on their shoulders like boulders. Small duvets in the ground give way to glistening lakes that let the moonlight bounce and sparkle over every breathing leaf. 

Toriel buries her head in her hands and stays there for a couple of moments. Tomorrow, she will have to inform some devastated monster family that their child, their husband, their mother will never come home again. She inhales deeply, ignoring the angry tears that prick at her eyes -

and she smells tea. 

Confused, she peels her hands off of her face and looks at Asgore, but no, he’s still watching her with that expression on his face and looks away quickly when she meets his gaze. He’s distinctly not holding a teacup. 

She stands up, and sniffs again. The smell is gone. 

She turns her head from side to side, eyebrows furrowing, smelling the air around her. She’s quite certain she smelled something - but where was it from -

Toriel looks down at her hands and brings them to her nose. Her hands...smell like cold tea. 

She kneels back down, eyebrows still furrowed in a deep V of confusion, and gently scoops up some more dust, then sniffs again. The smell of tea is even more prevalent. 

Wordlessly, Toriel gets up, careful not to dislodge the particles, and holds her hands out to Asgore. “Smell this,” she commands him.

“What -”

“Sniff.”

He raises an incredulous eyebrow at her, but inhales anyway. Then he stops and stares at the powder. “It smells like tea.” 

A second, even more powerful wave of relief floods through her body. The brimming smile fixes on her face, and she tilts her head back, closing her eyes. She wants to laugh, because no one has died, and they’re just a couple of goobers, panicking over some spilled tea. “Oh thank goodness,” she tells him, and forgetting herself she smiles at him, and he smiles back, surprised. 

“Then this is not dust?”

“I do not believe so,” she confirms, brushing off her skirt. 

Asgore does the same, cleaning off his kneecaps, and frowns. “Someone has deceived us. I have not brought any unstirred tea mix into my garden, not recently or ever.” 

She sobers immediately, reopening her eyes and focusing on the earth once more. “Deception, then. Someone wanted us to believe that one of our own was dead.” 

“Why?”

“To cause fear.”

“To instigate violence,” Asgore concludes at the same time. “But who would wish for such bloodshed?”

For a few moments, they both stare at the night sky, saying nothing. The stars hold no answers for them, silent and twinkling like gems in the night sky. Similarly, the garden holds no answers - no footprints, no clues, no sleuthing left to be done. When Toriel nods goodbye, solemnity weighs on both of them, the levity of relief vanished.

She drapes her coat neatly over the back of the chair, calls Sans and tells him what transpired. Odd - he is upset, but does not seem to want to theorize. As if he has a theory too golden to share. She bids him farewell with a strange sense of dissatisfaction leaden on her tongue. 

 

(Back at the palace, in the geometric center of the garden, a piece of paper with illegible handwriting drifts gently onto a patch of mottled blue-and-orange flowers.)


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dang, what's up with that nasty human. And that nasty skeleton. And that nasty flower. 
> 
> Jeez, everyone's being rude.

Saturday starts off standard for Papyrus. 

Before the birds tweet their good mornings through the windows, Undyne wide-awake, making her presence known (very known) by banging down his door. Of course, the great Papyrus is already awake - this morning, he is experimenting with lasagna and how to incorporate coffee grounds into the noodles - but he does not believe his brother appreciates the noise.

However! Even more extraordinary is his brother’s presence on the couch, and his lack of indignation at Undyne’s loud greetings. Not only is Sans awake, but he’s also _eating_ , a novelty for him so early in the morning. Truly, Papyrus is a master chef-encourager, if he was so heartening as to convince Sans to make his own breakfast. Besides, Sans has entertainment to supplement his eggs. Looks like he’s messaging Toriel (Sans looks _concerned_ , and before noon, so it has to be serious. Papyrus would ask, except Sans never tells him anything, maybe he’ll ask Toriel later). 

Across the room, Undyne shovels down her eggs, dousing them liberally with strawberry syrup until the eggs are more pink than the red-orange that burnt eggs _should_ be. She bounces around the living room while Papyrus shoves fistfuls of egg into his mouth, contenting herself with drumming her fingers on Sans’s skull. Sans merely grunts a goodbye - not a cheeky joke or anything - as Papyrus and Undyne whirl out the door, box o’ bones and spears in hand.

The sun is bright, uncovered by snowcloud. When Papyrus called about the weather (how cool, that _snow_ could jeopardize their training sessions! Just one more thing for him to be vigilant about! He must be prepared to fend off these nefarious clouds at all costs!) Alphys explained that the warmth was a temporary meteorological shift, which Papyrus explained to Undyne meant that there would be snow later. That phrasing was in one of their old science books. Which he read! But not very closely. Meteorology is boring. 

But for now, the duo enjoy tromping around in the grass toward their training clearing in the woods. The green is a sight neither of them have seen in a couple of days, and both are giddy - Undyne because the temperatures are less than freezing, _finally_ , she can breathe without feeling like she’s smothered mint paste all along her throat, and Papyrus because grass is awesome and lively and green. Not that snow isn’t awesome too. 

Saturday continues being standard for Papyrus. 

Their little clearing is within sight of the road, but far away enough that most wayward spears miss the windows of Toriel’s house. 

Training starts! with little warning. While Papyrus is preoccupied smelling the roses he delicately avoided trampling, Undyne launches a spear at his unprotected back, not even her customary fuhuhu to accompany the blow. 

Papyrus whips around at the last minute, sensing the incoming attack down to his very Soul, and retaliates easily with a flurry of snow-white bones. Undyne blocks each one, pulling a shield out of the determination of her Soul, and sends a ring of spears toward Papyrus that close around his head. 

Papyrus backflips backward, into the street, and continues his momentum up and over a car that passes underneath him. Mid-jump, he waves at the human child watching him awestruck through the moonroof, but Undyne is less than impressed with his tremendous work as ambassador and lands a hit on his leg while he’s distracted. He lands and stumbles and whips off another barrage at her head. 

She pulls out her shield again, and so they parry, back and forth and back and forth. So their training goes until Undyne gets...tired? 

Saturday gets weirder. 

He lands a solid hit on her chest, and the shield dematerializes, and the rest of his attack, two white two blue three white, nearly slam into her as well until he realizes. With a panicked flick of his magic the bones disappear, poofing inches from her body. 

“Undyne!” he calls, wiping sweat from his forehead. The great Papyrus would never hit an opponent so weakened!

Undyne waves him away, snarling, but he runs toward her regardless, throwing caution to the warming winds. She’s kneeling on the snow, one arm wrapped around her chest and the other planted in the ground, hard-won muscles supporting her like a column. Her head is bowed, her hair splayed over her shoulders and covering her eyes, and her expression is oddly scrunched. It takes a couple of seconds for Papyrus to place the expression, because Undyne never shows pain - but there it is. 

“Undyne?” he calls again, and she grits her teeth and flicks her wrist and he leaps straight up to dodge the spears that swing toward his chest. “Are you all right?” he calls from the top of his jump, before settling back on the wet ground with a squelch. 

“I’m fine!” she responds. Her words are short and tired, and when she laughs her exhalations are more puffs of exhaustion than true merriment. 

“I do not believe you,” Papyrus tells her, and kneels by her side. “You seem injured!” 

She still has an arm wrapped around her torso, but she has strength enough to look up and glare at him. “Never let your guard down!” she reprimands him, and he has to roll to one side to avoid the glimmering blue swords that embed themselves in the grass where he was sitting. “Fuhuhuhu!”

Papyrus huffs a breath of air, exasperated at her persistent attacks. He is trying to help! “Undyne, you do not look well.” He vaults next to her, refusing to stay away, trying to quell the concern in his chest. Her countenance, pale and drawn, isn’t helping. 

She stands up and totters unevenly on one foot, a wince spreading across her face. “I’m fine, you dork,” she says, and her breath catches on the last word and turns it into a pained hiss. 

“You are not breathing healthily,” he points out decisively. “Let’s get you to Alphys-”

“No!” Undyne yelps, suddenly on both feet. Then her voice smooths into what’s supposed to be a reassuring tone. The cracks in her voice do nothing to comfort him. “No, no, I’m fine. After all, I can still kick your butt!”

With a confident twist she extends both of her wrists toward Papyrus, expression grim and locked. He tenses, letting his bones test the vibrations of the air behind him and using his peripheries to monitor Undyne and everything within ten feet of her, but...nothing happens. 

He looks around himself, searching for traces of a materializing blue spear, but none come. The seconds trickle by. Undyne’s expression falls from brazen confidence to angry shame. 

“Undyne,” he says, with as much conviction as he can muster, “You need to see Alphys.” 

“No, I don’t,” she hisses, and tries again. Nothing happens. Papyrus winces sympathetically at her failure, then hastily hides the motion as her eyes snap up. Pity will just make her feel worse. 

Again. Nothing. “Arghhhh!” she yells, and slams her fist into the ground. But no second spear appears to pulverize the earth by her fist. 

“You are injured,” Papyrus deduces, eyeing the hand stilted and hovering around her chest. “Was it during fencing?” 

“It wasn’t that bad,” Undyne grumbles, eyes flicking to meet his keen gaze. 

He straightens his back. “The human hit you?”

“By accident,” she admits reluctantly, arm unconsciously snaking again around her stomach. “But it was just a scratch! Seriously, Papyrus, I’m fine.” 

Papyrus stands a couple feet away from her and holds out his hand. “Then strike me,” he challenges her quietly. 

She straightens uncertainly, and Papyrus cannot miss the doubt that winks across her face. Then her expression resolves into her more comfortable, defiant expression, and she laughs at him. “Of course! It’ll be easy!” 

But nothing happens. 

Undyne stares at her hands in horror and hisses a word with which Papyrus is not familiar. It sounds angry though, and bad, like something she said while whipping around the vents in Hotland, but somehow even more pained and uncomfortable. Her fists clench and unclench, and when panic appears on her face it stays. She stares at her hands as though they were dismembered and dangling in front of herself. There’s none of that previous brash confidence evident on any of her features, just wide-eyed shock and panicked alarm clenching through her hands. 

Papyrus steps forward again, carefully not touching her. “Please, Undyne -”

“No.” Her voice is low. She’s...growling at him. 

“Alphys would want to help.” 

“I know, but I can deal with this myself,” she snaps, balling her hands into fists and ramming them against her sides. Papyrus leaps forward and grabs her hands. She snatches them away. Irked, she levels a glare at him that once upon a time unsettled even Asgore. Papyrus is entirely unaffected. 

“She will not think less of you,” he tells her quietly. 

“I know that too!” she hisses, and throws her hands in the air. “But it wasn’t even that bad! I’m sure I’m fine, Pap.”

Undyne takes three steps forward and on the third step she lists too far to the right. 

Papyrus, hands half-poised to help, watches her stagger and fall over. Her arms are weak and trembling, and when he yells her name she doesn’t hear him. It is only thanks to his amazing reflexes that Undyne does not meet a pillow made of snow. 

 

There is a throne room miles underneath the ground. This throne room used to be a garden, months ago, but the flowers down here show signs of neglect. They are shrivelled without sunlight and wilting without water, their crinkled and torn leaves drifting like a child’s shredded drawing to the old, cracked floor. 

In this throne room, there is but one living flower. This flower retains a healthy yellow tint to its petals and a robustness in its leaves that hints at a strength beyond the natural. It sits below the largest gaping hole in the Underground, the one that once held a great Barrier, letting new fresh sunlight soak through its chlorophyll. It contemplates. 

Contemplating isn’t a thing a flower should be able to do, but. Many natural laws are shredded and rewritten by determination. 

This flower has lived in the Underground for months, covering every inch of a mostly isolated and unchanging world with the shadow of its body. It has uncovered every snow poff and looked out over every thermal rising from flowing lava. Every day, every passing hour, it remembers a human that might have once called themself its friend. 

There is a throne room, miles underneath the ground. In that throne room, a flower turns its head toward the sunlight, and decides to pay a visit. 

 

The skeleton begins to move, rolling up its sleeves and raising both hands in front of his chest. _I am G-A-S-T-E-R,_ the skeletal hands say, spelling the letters out rapidly. 

Frisk sits up and waves back with one hand, but they keep a firm hold on the stick in the other. Something about that figure is off-putting. Probably has to do with the disintegrating face. 

Frisk scootches purposefully toward where he kneels. He goes still and watches them hawkishly. _Hi, Gaster,_ they sign, stowing the stick temporarily in their back pocket. _My name is F-R-I-S-K._

The figure studies them, then turns and begins to stride away. _Follow me._

Frisk tries to stand, but their left leg can’t support their weight. “Wait!” they call after Gaster. They would sign, that’s polite, but he’s not looking at them. “Please, just give me a second -”

He stops but still doesn’t look at them, instead clasping his hands behind his back and drawing himself up straighter. Though he doesn’t speak, every line of his body radiates rigid impatience. 

Frisk pulls a second Candy out of their Box and pops it in their mouth, keeping their eyes trained on Gaster’s back, then sighs in relief as numbness spreads across their leg. Their calf has stopped burning, at least, and they pull themself onto their feet unsteadily. Tentatively, they press their weight against the ground - their leg is numb and pretty unusable at the moment, but they can hobble around, at least. It’s better than being completely immobilized. 

They hop-jump, tentatively at first but gaining confidence, to Gaster’s side. Before they’ve even drawn level with him he takes off walking toward an arbitrary direction. Frisk has to run to keep up with his pace, and after several moments they give up on their leg altogether, forsaking comfort for speed. 

Frisk has so many questions. They try to get in front so they can sign, but every time they accelerate he appears to move even faster, though the pace of his legs doesn’t actively change. Frisk frowns at him. 

“Where am I?” they ask anyway, deciding to use their vocal cords. 

The rhythm of his feet continues as if Frisk hadn’t spoken, but the hands hovering over his shoulders move in a response. _You do not need to know._

Every bone in his hands reeks of animosity, and it puts Frisk on edge. Subconsciously, they slow down, putting distance between themself and the perceived threat, before hurrying back to keep up with Gaster. “What happened to me?” they try again.

If possible, Gaster’s back goes even stiffer, more curt. He doesn’t respond. 

Frisk shrinks away, wondering at his anger. He seems so angry, and they can’t think why - unless he’s like this all the time? They want to be be friends, though! They want to be friends with everyone. He’s just a bit angrier than most. Besides, they befriended Undyne, so they’re sure they can make friends with Gaster, too! 

The pure white that surrounds them sags away in portions. The ceiling drips a black that runs down and rolls over the walls, pooling along the bottom until the last vestiges of white disappear beneath Frisk’s feet. The surfaces around them remain dripping and black until everything is that same dark shade, then with one uniform movement the walls stiffen into a shimmering black that feels like cool metal. Frisk prods at the metal, and it sort of shivers away from their touch, so Frisk pats it apologetically and tells the wall that it’s doing a good job of being a wall. 

The room is not completely dark. Frisk looks around for the light source, and finds Gaster standing silent in front of a control panel of sorts. A smooth rectangular double door is positioned dead center of that wall. Two fluorescent stripes run perfectly parallel to the right side of that wall, one blue and one orange, emitting a strange glow that illuminates the room. 

Frisk steps closer to Gaster to inspect the control panel, hobbling uncomfortably on one leg, and pretends they don’t notice him move away from them. The panel reads F1 - F2 - F3 up to F6, then a similar set of B, P and W. 

He presses P2, and before Frisk can ask him what the letters mean the room starts falling. 

Frisk throws their hands out for balance and nearly hits Gaster in the side. Gaster has not moved. Frisk realizes that this is quarter of the room actually an elevator, and once they’re sure gravity isn’t going to win out over whatever lowers them to the ground, they relax. There’s music coming from somewhere, Frisk thinks the ceiling, a bouncy sort of tune that seems to float around the room. The song definitely has some nice sound effects going in the background that remind them of Napstablook. In fact, they’re pretty sure that Napstablook has in some way touched this music with their nonexistent ghostly arms, because there’s a definite strain of ghostly jingle bells in the background. 

“Where are we going?”

No response. Frisk sighs quietly.

The elevator ride takes a long time. Not as long as the elevator ride up to Asgore’s old castle, but still a long time. They tap their foot to the music, switching from fourth notes to eighth notes to fourth notes again. Finally, the doors of the elevator hiss open, complete with a cute little ding and everything. 

Gaster moves purposefully out the door. Frisk steps outside the elevator and gasps quietly, because this is New Home and there are patches of flowers in every color covering the earth like a homemade quilt. To their right, a cluster of fiery red monster plants and in front of them are strange purple-and-orange flowers that remind them of butterscotch pie, and a sea of golden flowers that twine around their ankles, caressing them in a friendly hello. Gaster is a splotch of black in this world of color, but the flowers curl around him too and he picks his way along a patch of dirt so he doesn’t step on any and the petals they sprinkle on his robe and make him look a bit more like he belongs, at home.

There is a house directly in front of Gaster, Frisk notices. They straighten their leg, wincing painfully - the healing power from the Candy has worn off so Frisk can feel how their nerves have been scorched off on the left-hand side; and when they peel back their pants the skin is red and inflamed - and walk as quickly as they can onto the path, trying to keep pace. 

The two hands that perch on Gaster’s shoulderblades like wings face Frisk and say _If you need healing, then inside is someone who will help you._

Toriel, Frisk knows. They take a couple of happy steps toward the house, thinking that maybe they’re not dead and Toriel will be waiting for them with some snail pie and they’ll share another meal together and then go have a snowball fight with Sans and Papyrus and then Undyne will suplex a snowman because she can. 

Gaster doesn’t move to follow. Frisk looks at him curiously. _Are you coming, Mr. Gaster?_

_I will not._

Frisk frowns at him, disappointed that he is foiling their friendship plot at every turn, but they sign _thank you_ anyway.

They think that maybe they are dead. They turn, and take a deep breath, and knock on the door.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys. I've got both good and bad news for this fic. 
> 
> First off, I've got 95% of it written. Yay! That's the good news - I'm not leaving with nothing to show. 
> 
> The bad news is that I've pretty much lost motivation to write the story, and by write I mean edit and put 100% effort toward. Unfortunately, this fic took so long to create (it'll end up around 140k) that my writing style and perception of characters changed dramatically while I was still making the fic. Chara, Sans, Toriel - going through game lore since this story's beginning in January has made me change my mind about them and their motivations, Chara in particular. Basically, writing this became tiring, because there is _so much_ I could have done better. Over the course of several months, this story sort of became a burden of stress - something I knew I had to do but just really, really didn't want to touch. 
> 
> However, I'm not giving up on it entirely. As I said previously, most of the fic has been written down. I'll need to add in a couple of scenes, but other than that, it'll be copy-and-paste from the draft of the text. Now, when I put everything up, I can return to writing shorter (and hopefully much better-constructed) things. 
> 
> That being said, I promise to you all that this entire story _will_ go up. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy reading the rest!

Toriel opens the door. She says hello, and looks down at Frisk, and recoils and shuts the door. 

Frisk swallows and knocks again. “Mom?” they call quietly. 

“What is your name, child?” Toriel asks through the door, and her voice is colder than Mt. Ebott during a snowstorm. 

“My name is Frisk.” 

Gaster stands behind them and says nothing, watching. 

Toriel opens the door again, slightly, then inhales deeply and pushes it open the rest of the way. Her smile does not reach her eyes. And her eyes...they’re strange, milky-white and empty. Frisk shudders. “Hello, child,” she says. “Please come in.”

Frisk steps inside the door. The air smells like home, like tea and snail pie. Asgore sits at Toriel’s table, nursing a steaming mug. “Howdy, child,” he rumbles at them. There is a rip in Asgore’s chestplate that reveals brown fur beneath. 

“Hi, D-Asgore,” they respond, hovering awkwardly in the entrance. Toriel moves past them and seats herself, then gets up again to pull out a chair. 

“Please take a seat,” she offers. “Take my mug, I was not going to finish this tea regardless. No offense intended, Asgore, but I have not yet reacquired the taste.” 

Asgore nods and does not look offended. Frisk sits across from Toriel, hopping a bit to reach the chair. “How did you get here, child?” 

“I don’t know,” they respond honestly. “I...I think I died.” 

Toriel nods. “So have we all.” 

Frisk swallows, and when they ask “How did you die?” they don’t really want to know the answer. They wish they didn’t already know the answer. 

Toriel eyes them, blank and staring, and answers anyway. “You killed me, child.”

Frisk winces and swirls their mug in their hands, bites down on a protest. It’s better to apologize and explain later. “I’m sorry, Toriel.” 

Toriel sighs deeply. Asgore gets up from his chair. “I am glad you succeeded in making it to the Overworld, at the least.” 

Frisk makes the connection. This is the suicide king, who freely gave his soul so they could cross the barrier. They look again at his torn chestplate - the hole is just large enough to slip a Soul through - and swallow hard and nod. “Thank you,” they say, even though - even though they reset over his death. But he doesn’t need to know that. He doesn’t. 

He nods, and his face looks a bit lighter as he exits Toriel’s home. He bids a cheerful hello to Gaster as he trots down the path and away from Toriel’s home.

Toriel doesn’t look like she wants to say anything. Frisk feels a bit sick and doesn’t feel like conversation either, but the silence is stifling, and opening with “hey could you get the shards out of literally everywhere on my body with healing magic” doesn’t seem like the best conversation opener. They scrounge around desperately for a topic, and come up with “How was your day?” 

“It was fine.” 

Toriel’s response is curt and short. Frisk fidgets awkwardly for conversation. Toriel pointedly does not look at them, preferring instead to sip at her tea with rigid movements.

“So, what do you typically do around here?” Frisk asks after an uncomfortably prolonged quiet. They’re genuinely curious about this one. Outside, the flowers extended for miles, but there was a definitive line to their left where the flowers just stopped. They wonder what’s beyond that barrier, because, well, no one can garden for the rest of their life. Or not-life. 

“I talk to people.” Toriel’s tone really does not brook more conversation, but Frisk is determined. 

“To who?” 

“To _whom_ ,” Toriel corrects with a roll of her ghostly eyes - somehow, even without pupils, the motion is clear. Then, as if correcting herself, she chisels her expression back into granite. “Asgore, Sans, Papyrus. Gaster. Undyne and Alphys. Many people. It is not hard to be social when there are so many dead.” 

Frisk...is going to pretend they didn’t hear that. “So...um, do you and Asgore get along better now?” 

Toriel’s grip tightens around her cup. “We are cordial,” she responds shortly. 

“Do you like him better now?”

Toriel grits her teeth. She lays her palms flat on the table and bores her gaze into Frisk’s own. “Child, why are you here?” 

Frisk flinches away from the sharpness of her voice and feels their heart drops. “I wanted to say hi,” they say miserably. 

Toriel looks like she’s having an argument inside her head and is losing. Her eyes keep flicking up to Frisks’ eyes then back down again, rapidly, with a furrowed face. “You have said your greetings. What else do you want?” 

Frisk wants to say something, to reach out, but they won’t hurt her by telling her about Chara. They search for a different way to start. “Mom,” they say, and she flinches, hands tightening around her teacup. Frisk hurriedly tries again. “Toriel, I mean.” How to approach this? “When I fell, there was something else inside me. Another Soul. And they were the one...that told me that monsters couldn’t feel love.”

“What are you saying?” 

“I mean, there was someone else with me who wanted me to...to kill everyone.” 

“You claim that this mysterious third presence was the true instigator.” 

“Yeah,” Frisk responds. “I know it sounds...bad,” Toriel snorts and nods, eyes hard, “but it’s the truth.” Frisk looks down at their teacup and sees their reflection inside, their eyes shimmering. “M-Toriel, I’m really sorry that I killed you. I wish I could go back and change it because I lo-because that’s not fair to you. I just...I was scared. Everything in the Ruins was trying to kill me, and I thought you were going to kill me, too, and then you attacked, and I didn’t know what to do.”

They swallow, and their throat is nearly raw from all the anguish they’re swallowing. Outside of their range of vision, Toriel looks down at her mug and her eyes close. “I don’t expect you to forgive me.” Frisk pushes the cup away and rests their chin on their arms, looking anywhere but at Toriel. They wouldn’t deserve her forgiveness, but they’d hoped that she would believe them. “But if there’s something I can do to...to help you, or make you feel better. I would be happy to.”

Frisk’s voice cracks along the edges, and they take deep, steadying breaths to keep themself from crying. It seems that even now, they can’t atone for their sins.

Despite herself, Toriel’s expression softens. She wants desperately to believe them.

“Why did you kill the rest, then? The others in my timeline? Papyrus, Undyne, Asgore?” 

Frisk steels themself. “The more that Ch- that they killed, the easier it became to keep going, I guess. And the m-more I believed that the other monsters only wanted to kill me, because when I got to Snowdin there weren’t many monsters there and they started putting out d-decoys to deter me, and all I really w-wanted was...well, that doesn’t matter, it doesn’t. The other Soul, they kept telling me things, terrible things and I believed them, a-and...I’m sorry, T-toriel, I didn’t r-really want to, but I did.” 

“What did you want then, child?” 

Frisk closes their eyes and forces themself to sit up straighter despite the ache in their chest. “I don’t know. I wanted to...I wanted to be friends, I guess,” and they laugh emptily because that sounds stupid even to them. “But it seemed like making friends wasn’t working, because monsters just...kept attacking, and the other Soul, they wanted to...they wanted to destroy everything.” 

A moment passes. Frisk doesn’t look anywhere except to stare at the mug, whose steam continues to curl lazily toward the ceiling. It makes them think of the hot cider their mother made them a couple of weeks ago. It seems like a lot longer ago, now, with this strange Toriel next to them who wants nothing to do with them. 

“Did you ever succeed?” Toriel’s voice comes out kind of strangled, but Frisk still doesn’t look up. 

For as much as they could pretend those other timelines never happened in the Overworld, the consequences of their sins face them right now. Even though Sans reassured them that the blame lay with Chara, they cannot help but believe that they could have done more. They could have revolted earlier, they could have been stronger in their convictions, could have continued warding off Chara, they could have blocked their fear. They could have been better. They weren’t good enough.

“In the end, I did,” they respond, eyes soft and sad. They keep their gaze locked on their cup, spinning it idly between their palms. “Everyone Overground, they have a happy ending. And even if I’m not there, they can still...well, they’ll figure it out. I’m not the only human who likes monsters anymore!” 

“But you are the first.”

“Yeah, but there are plenty of others! And besides, we’ve made a lot of progress over the past couple of months, I’m sure they’ll be fine without me.”

Frisk tries for optimism and falls far short. Despite everyone’s reassurances, they can’t help but feel - a long, hard-ingrained belief that deep down, they’re not vital, they’re replaceable, they’re a mistake. It still hurts, though. 

They want to go home. 

And then there are two long furred arms wrapped around their chest. 

Frisk freezes, and then the arms are gone as soon as they appeared. They turn, and Toriel lets go, and she stands with her hands clasped in front of her and muzzle decidedly wet. “You are different,” she says and her voice breaks. “When you came to my house, you...you grabbed a knife and you asked me how to get out, and you never once...you never asked me about my day, or what I was reading, you merely...merely asked how to get out. How to leave. But you are different now.” 

Frisk finally meets Toriel’s eyes. Her eyes are smiling even though her mouth is not. “Gaster told us there were two of you. Two Angels, he said. One who would kill us all, and one who would not. He said one would come, and it would be the first. When you walked in I remembered only the first, but...my child...Frisk? I am sorry. It was hard to put aside my emotions at first.” Toriel takes a deep breath. 

Frisk freezes in their seat. They lock eyes with Toriel, willing themself not to cry. Her smile is watery. “You call the other Toriel mother, now?” 

Frisk nods. “She is my mother,” they reaffirm quietly, and smile despite themself. “And I guess you kind of are too, by extension?” they offer, leaping at hope with both hands outstretched. “I did terrible things to you and I understand if you don’t want me to call you Mom but...I know it makes you happy and it makes me happy too, so -”

“I would love that, my child.” Toriel wraps Frisk in another hug, and this time Frisk gets to hug back. “Frisk,” she adds, trying out the name. 

Frisk buries their face in Toriel’s chest, feeling hope bubble up in their chest. Even though this Toriel doesn’t have eyes like Frisk’s Toriel does her chest is still warm and she still wraps her arms around Frisk with the same comforting motion and for a moment, just a moment, Frisk can believe that they’re home. 

Frisk and Toriel stay that way for a long moment, doing nothing but holding each other. Finally, Frisk finds the strength to pull away. Now that Toriel’s accepted them, hundreds of questions vye on their tongue for dominance, and Frisk’s thirteen-year-old brain picks the most important one. 

“So you and Asgore really are friends now?” 

Toriel’s expression gets stuck between a fond smile and a grimace and grinds to a halt at grimace. “Of a sort. I...discovered some interesting things while I was here. I have always been quick to judge, my child, especially in regards to the safety of my children.” Frisk giggles, because that they know, and Toriel gives them a sort of surprised smile in return. “Asgore explained that, even if he had received the seventh Soul, he would have delayed our release, because he knew that to break the barrier hastily would lead to war with the humans.”

“But it hasn’t,” Frisk points out. “At least, not in my timeline.”

“That may be true. But in your timeline, you serve as a buffer, as proof that monsters do not kill mindlessly.”

“That’s true,” they acknowledge, chewing on their lips thoughtfully. That explains, at least, why Asgore didn’t take the first human Soul and cross the barrier himself. “But I thought you were mad at him for killing all of your kids?” 

This time, that’s undoubtedly a grimace on Toriel’s face. “I was. In fact, I still am. But I have accepted that he acted for what he believed to be the best for his country at the time. Of course, this does not excuse murder - I will never forget what he did to my children - but as I forgive him I must also remember my own flaws. As he was hasty in his judgments, so was I. I still am.” 

Toriel re-seats herself, this time next to Frisk, letting their legs brush casually. Frisk’s feet don’t even touch the ground, so they content themself with swinging them in a steady rhythm. “Mom,” they say easily, then look at Toriel to double-check that she’s actually okay with that title, and yes she seems to be. “What is this place?” 

“This is the Void,” she responds, then snorts, folding her hands neatly over the table. “The name was originally Gaster’s. It seems he is as creative as our King in that regard. Here, the Souls of monsters killed in previous timelines congregate to rest and find peace.” 

Frisk’s blood runs cold. This place is _huge_. “How many...how many monsters are here?” 

“A few,” Toriel replies evasively, then taps her fingers together and clarifies. “There were hundreds, in the beginning.”

“In the beginning?”

“Our population has dwindled.”

“The rest weren’t killed, were they?” Frisk yelps. 

Toriel rummages around for words. “Not precisely. You see, Gaster is the caretaker of the Void - he was the first to enter the Void, and from energy he created its physical manifestation - the flowers you see now, the elevator and its color scheme, the bodies with which we choose to represent ourselves. However, as the timelines continued multiplying, the good Doctor could no longer sustain as many iterations of ourselves. He had to condense some of our forms. Those of us with similar mental experiences, regardless of physical appearance, combined.”

Frisk blinks, brain sticking on the title “good Doctor.” They shake their head and decide to ask about that later. “What does that mean? Are you a bunch of Toriels?” 

“I am a conglomeration, of sorts, of the Toriels who have shared my experiences. The Mother Goat, as I have nicknamed myself.” She grins to herself. It’s a familiar grin, and Frisk relaxes a bit, even if the lack of pupils still creeps them out majorly. “But to answer your question - I am those who shared my experience, who were killed then sentenced to watch their friends in the same timeline die in the same manner.” 

“What about everyone else? Is Asgore also, like, a hundred different Asgores?” Think of all the tea-making prowess, a corner of their mind says, and they almost laugh out loud. 

Toriel sips at her tea, contemplative. “Yes and no. The Asgore you encountered is one of few - each products of their own suicide. However, there is an Asgore from timelines where many of us were killed.” She takes another sip. “For some reason, there are none who remember quite the same as I do, none that remember you - rather, the second Angel - seeking out every living being in the Underground and destroying them. But nonetheless, combinations exist.” 

“How...” Frisk struggles to wrap their mind around this concept. Their friends, shoved into one body, sorted by the timeline Frisk and Chara enacted? “How is this possible?”

“That is a good question, young one,” Toriel laughs. “Even I do not understand entirely. From the little I can grasp, a timeline holds a certain amount of potential. Resetting over that timeline, then, sends that energy to the Void. Gaster received it and used it to house our Souls in bodies agreeable to us, and also to create this place. Without the good Doctor, we would wander this place, eternally lost, small beacons of light in a sea of nothing.” 

Frisk raises their cup to their mouth absently, trying to process everything. The drink is pleasantly warm, and they swallow without conscious thought. They know so little that they do not know what to ask. Energy as a quantitative number? This is more for Sans than for them...

Frisk nearly drops their cup as a thought occurs to them. “So there’s a Sans from...from your timeline...?” 

“Yes.” 

Frisk takes another sip, trying to steady their hands, and they wonder how much he knows.

“How did you die, my child?” 

“Uh, the other...person in my head, they kicked me out. They took half of my Soul.” Frisk sets their cup down and looks toward their chest, where half of a red beating heart is faintly visible from underneath their clothes. Then, self-consciously, they pick up the cup again and quickly change the subject. “Why do you call Gaster the good Doctor?” 

“He has done much to bring us all together.” 

“Ah,” Frisk responds. They watch their tea swirl around in Toriel’s cup and can’t think of anything else to say.

“You look despondent, my child,” Toriel notices. 

“It’s just...” they kick their legs against their chair, looking to one side. “He just...attacked me when I showed up. I don’t think he thought I was me, and I don’t know how to convince him.”

“He attacked you?” Toriel asks, surprised. “My child, are you hurt?” 

“Well...” they trail off. “A little bit. Gaster told me to ask you for help, because he attacked me and now I have bone shards all over me.” 

Toriel sets her cup down, shocked. “Then I am remiss in not helping. Please, this way.”   
Toriel leads Frisk to their room, which is coated in a thin layer of dust and disuse, and gently, one-by-one, removes each of the shards from their skin. Frisk cannot stop smiling despite the pain throughout the entire process. Frisk suspects that there are a lot of people in this place that are not going to like them, at all. But their mother, at least, has forgiven them.

“Frisk...it will not be easy, existing here. There are a lot of people who will not be so quick to understand.”

“I know.” Frisk looks at the ground, but grins back anyway. “I have to try to make friends, and besides, it might help them. To talk to me. I’m going to make everyone feel better!” they exclaim, and Toriel laughs.

“I am sure you will succeed, dear child.” 

Frisk exits the house with a mug of tea, a slice of butterscotch pie, and a warm grin that beams at their back.

 

When Papyrus flings open the doors to the Lab, the first thing that assaults his eyes is darkness. The entire building is practically black compared to the blinding whiteness of the snowy outside world. He skids to a halt and brings his free hand, the one not crossed over Undyne’s waist to keep her securely over his shoulder, and rubs his eyes. As soon as they adjust he careens straight down the main hall.

There are smaller hallways branching off the first, looking appropriately dark and mysterious for a Lab of this size, but he keeps bounding down the central one, calling Alphys’s name as he goes. He passes piles of random objects - a series of joke books whose pages are crinkled with water damage, a box of dog bones with crumbs spewed in every which direction around its edges, a vending machine for bags of chips that are filled more with air than actual, carb-filled potato wedges. Papyrus doesn’t stop to look down the halls, just keeps running and desperately calling Alphys’s name. On his back, Undyne flops lifelessly and her head lolls around his shoulder. He tries to even his stride, to keep her head from jarring against his battle body. His voice echoes off the walls as he calls Alphys’s name again. 

The lab gets darker and darker, but he keeps running, keeps calling for help. Finally, _finally_ , Alphys’s voice goes “Papyrus?” and she materializes from behind an inconspicuous door.

“Help,” he says weakly, and she catches sight of Undyne draped limply over his shoulders. 

She turns deathly pale and makes a small, jerky, aborted motion forward with two hands. “W-what happened?” she near-whispers, and he nearly does not catch her words. She hops quickly to his side and takes one of Undyne’s hands from where her arms are dangling uselessly at his side.

“I do not know,” he responds honestly, forcing himself to not turn with her movements as she inspects Undyne from on his shoulders. “We were sparring, and she just...fell over!” 

“C-come this w-way,” she stutters in a breaking voice, and hurries off through a door directly to his left.

Without looking around he follows her trustingly through the door. It’s a rather sparsely decorated room, just a desk and desktop on one side and a metallic bed in the middle. Centered directly over the bed...platform...hangs a dimly flickering lightbulb coated in a thin layer of dust. “S-set her down,” Alphys directs in a voice that still squeaks. 

Papyrus lays Undyne over the bed, taking the chance to actually look at her face. She’s gone pale, a pale blue color that is too close to his own chalky shade of white for his comfort. Her mouth is contorted in a grimace of pain and her face is streaked with sweat and even though Papyrus hates slime he reaches out and sets a hand over her forehead. “It will be okay,” he tells her solemnly, and he can almost believe that she hears him. 

Alphys finishes buttoning up a lab coat that she seems to have procured from nowhere. She has pulled a notepad and a pen, also from nowhere. She flips through a couple of scribbled-on pages in a brisk, businesslike manner and gestures him toward the only other chair in the room. “S-so, Papyrus. I n-need to know, uh, s-specifically, w-what happened.” 

“Well,” Papyrus muses. “We were sparring, in the snow, like we always do. She was using her spears, as per usual - she is very deadly with them but you already know that - and then she just...could not create them any longer. Undyne tried multiple times, three I think, if my great memory serves me, to form a spear, but could not. I tried to approach her but she attacked me. I think she thought I thought her weak. Which is not at all the case! I was only concerned! But she tried to hit me anyway and only became more upset when she could not succeed. Then she...fell over.” 

Alphys adjusts her glasses on her nose and begins to scribble things down. When Papyrus peers over her shoulder, her letters aren’t familiar to him - they’re some sort of conglomeration of scribbles that only look like Roman characters if he turns his head just the right way. Sans used to have handwriting like that. 

“D-do you remember any, er, specific symptoms?” 

Papyrus thinks back and shakes his head. “She simply fell over,” he shrugs sadly. “I am sorry I could not be of more use.” 

“N-no, it’s n-not your fault,” she looks at him earnestly. “I’m s-sure there was nothing you could have done. Y-you know Undyne,” she says, adjusting her glasses and huffing a sad smile, “she w-would never have conceded defeat.” 

“Well, do you know what is wrong?” Papyrus asks, peering closer at Alphys’s face. 

“N-not yet,” Alphys says, turning from him and approaching the platform. She procures an array of intimidating metal devices from her lab coat pocket and begins to, from what Papyrus can see, diagnose. 

“Can I help?” he asks eagerly. Alphys jumps and nearly jabs herself with some metallic...thing with a pointy end. He winces. 

“N-no, just...I hope I c-can, um, tell you more in a couple of minutes.” 

Papyrus resolves to keep quiet and watch Alphys work, but it’s hard. Alphys flits around Undyne, pressing a claw against her forehead and her ribcage and finally her feet. Papyrus can keep quiet until Alphys wipes down the inside of Undyne’s wrist and stabs her. 

“What are you doing!” Papyrus yelps. Alphys visibly does not jump and stays completely unmoving, needle still forced through Undyne’s skin. He jumps to his feet and reaches out, then pulls his arm back. He’s sure Alphys knows what she’s doing...?

Finally, she pulls back and lifts the needle so that the blue liquid inside glints ominously against the faded light of the overhead fixture. She lifts a claw and taps one side gingerly, watching the contents swirl around. Through clenched teeth she responds “Drawing blood,” and sighing, she shakes her head and hurries into a separate room.

Papyrus sits back down, feeling pretty useless. After several minutes he stands again, then sits, then does jumping jacks to get the blood flowing through his veins. Then, looking surreptitiously around himself, he pulls back one of Undyne’s eyelids and pretends she’s awake again. 

He feels foolish and lets it go, taking a step back. Instead he starts to pace, then when he realizes how loud his footsteps are against the oppressive silence in the Lab he sits back down. His battle body clinks too loudly against the chair. Papyrus rests his head in his hands and kicks his legs against the floor. He pulls out his phone, tries to call Sans and sees that he has no reception. Sighing, he puts his phone back in his ribcage and tries to keep still.

Of course, it doesn’t work. Papyrus stands up again and goes to knock on the door when it opens of its own accord to admit Alphys, who’s saying “I-I’ve managed to - Papyrus? Why are you so close to the door, heh heh...” 

“I am sorry, I only wanted to...to, well...see if I could help!” 

Alphys nods and gestures awkwardly back toward his chair. He sits and watches her attentively. She flounders under the attention and spends a solid half-minute cleaning her glasses before putting them back on her face and staring at the tiles beneath his boots. “I-it’s...not good,” she says eventually, tiredly.

Papyrus’s heart plummets down to his boots. “Will she lose an eye or something terrible?” he cries.

Alphys looks torn between a laugh and a sob. “N-no, worse, Papyrus. I don’t know...”

Papyrus’s breathing stops for a long, long time. “Is she going to be okay?” he very, very quietly asks. “What is wrong?” 

“It’s buttercup poisoning,” she blurts, and scrubs the back of her hand against her cheek. “It’s not easily curable and it’s p-pretty fatal and...I don’t know, Papyrus, I don’t know if she’s going to be okay, I don’t...I c-can’t...I c-can’t mess this up and I’m v-very good at m-messing up...”

Alphys hunches her shoulders and turns her face away, head bowed low enough that the tip of her snout brushes against the metal of the table-turned-bed. Beneath her, Undyne respires shallowly. Her shoulders start to shake. Papyrus brushes aside awkwardness and hefts all of his gangling bones into an upright position. Cautiously, he kneels beside her so that his jawbone is level with the plates protruding from her skull. “It will be okay,” he tells her quietly. 

“No it won’t!” she hiccups, curling further into her lab coat. “I-I’m not good at this, Papyrus, I can’t save people, I can only...I can only hurt t-them, and...I can’t do that t-to U-undyne, she doesn’t d-deserve that.”

“You have helped many people!” Papyrus exclaims, appalled. He wishes Alphys would look at him but doesn’t force her. He feels the sting of her grief as if it were his own, and it compounds with the ball of dread curdling and stinging through his stomach. “Shhh,” he hushes her protestations. “Your inventions have helped many people, I see that! And Undyne chose to be with you, Alphys. She decides what she does and does not deserve, you cannot make that choice for her!” 

Papyrus is quite relieved to see Alphys’s face turn slightly toward his own, expression crinkling in an odd way. “And besides, I know she is very happy with you,” he confides quietly. “She tells me a great many things, and she believes in you! Almost as much as I do! Maybe even more!” 

Papyrus raises his eyebrows at her and grins as wide as he can with that anguish still rotting through his bones. To his immense relief, her grief seems to have stilled for the moment. 

“S-she’s right,” Alphys murmurs, more to herself than to Papyrus. “Y-you’re right too, Papyrus. E-everyone believes in me. I c-can do this. I won’t let her die.” 

“That is the spirit!” Papyrus beams at her and claps his hands together. She jumps at the noise, but smiles back anyway. “Is there any way I could help?” 

Alphys opens her mouth to say no. But she looks at his eager face and reconsiders. “I know that Asgore had a similar problem once,” she thinks aloud. “Could you, um, b-bring him here? Please?”

“I will go as fast as my speedy bones can take me! Do not fear, Alphys, the Great Papyrus is always here to help. Nyeh heh heh!”

Alphys watches him sprint away and even chuckles, despite herself. Then she takes a deep breath to steel herself, swallows the wave of regret and grief and guilt that threatens to pull her mind under, and sketches Undyne’s mutating hemoglobin under the dim light of the lab. 

 

Half an hour later, the doorbell rings to the Lab. Although the door is at least twenty rooms away, Alphys hears it through the intercom system and jumps over the lens of her microscope. Her glasses bang against the rim of the eyepieces, and she shakes herself, trying to rid her claws of the anxious tremors that run down their length. Hurriedly she stands up and fixes her lab coat. As she runs toward the front door, she realizes that the buttons on her lab coat are askew, and fixes them with an impatient huff of breath. 

Alphys halts in front of the door, clicking her claws together nervously. The doorbell rings again. There’s a slight break in the tone, like the button was depressed with a shaking hand. Normally Undyne gets the door, she hates social situations unless it’s her dear friends (and even then sometimes, heh heh), but Undyne...

Summoning her courage, Alphys pulls the door open. “Hello?”

She nearly closes the door again, because Toriel stands outside. Then Alphys processes the worried expression, and yes, her shaking hands. “What do you want?” Alphys asks with a bit more venom than intended, seeing Toriel spitting adjectives like _callous_ and _insensitive_ at Undyne before her eyes. Then she winces and adds “...uh, Your M-Majesty?” 

“Hello, Alphys,” Toriel replies calmly. If she’d noticed Alphys’s outright aggression, she hides it remarkably well. Alphys supposes that that’s to be expected of a Queen of Toriel’s caliber. “I...well. I heard that Undyne was unwell?” 

Alphys can feel her entire face falling, and her shoulders slump. “W-well, yes, she’s...something is wrong, and w-we don’t know what. Where’s Asgore?” 

“He is currently in the capital. Papyrus found me instead. How is Undyne faring?” 

“Not well,” Alphys replies honestly, leaning against the doorframe and squinting a bit against the light blinding her off the snow. She leans backward and flicks on the lights of the entrance of the lab. “She’s stuck in b-bed and, w-well, she hasn’t woken up for half an h-hour, which is, well, a pretty important monster threshold. I r-really need to go, um, see h-how she’s doing...”

Toriel nods quickly. “I understand if you need to work. Would it be permissible for me to visit Undyne?” 

Alphys stares at her blankly. “S-she won’t be very interesting...?” 

“That is no problem,” Toriel hastens to reassure her. The Queen opens her mouth to say something else, then closes it again and nods to Alphys. 

Alphys scurries back through the foyer, through the kitchen, past the door to the bedroom and the Wii room and the third door the massive swimming pool with water-resistant TV screens, then in a small door in the back of a long hall. Then down a set of long, long steps without lights, then out through the main hall of the science part of the Lab. It’s only when Alphys finishes weaving through the computer lab and the biology lab and then, between them, the bioelectrical lab that she realizes that she’d only invited Toriel in the door after their entire conversation was practically over. The Queen must have been freezing out on that doorstep, Alphys reprimands herself, then swallows that self-recriminating thought. It’s a lesson learned, she tells herself, glancing back toward where Toriel keeps pace with her easily, looking more and more concerned with every step. She’ll do better next time, and that’s what matters. 

“W-well, here she is,” Alphys announces to the entire room, shuffling awkwardly with her lab coat. 

Undyne, if possible, looks even more terrible. Her earfins and gills are sagging limply against her skin, and the sheen of sweat that coats her entire body is shinier and more noticeable than ever. Alphys shakes her head and heads back toward her microscope. When she stops to look back at Toriel, the Queen looks deeply shaken. 

“What is ailing her?” the Queen asks quietly, looking horrified. 

Alphys opens her mouth to respond, but quickly remembers the tapes down in the True Lab. For a moment, she toys with the idea of lying, but decides against it, throwing her shoulders a bit wider apart. “Buttercup poisoning.” 

“Buttercup poisoning?” Toriel exclaims, both hands flying to her mouth. She turns from Undyne to stare at Alphys with shaking eyes. “How can you be sure?” 

“I recognize the symptoms,” Alphys shrugs, staring at the tiles by her feet to avoid the Queen’s gaze. “I-it’s not pretty, your Majesty, to be h-honest. Her hemoglobin is mutated, and given that her bloodflow isn’t particularly c-conducive to thermal circulation in the first place - w-well, I mean, she needs outside sources to moderate her body temperature, that’s w-why she liked Waterfall, I do the same thing, not live in Waterfall but I need outside t-temperature too...it’s a problem.”

“But...buttercups?” Toriel repeats, still shocked.

“Yeah,” Alphys replies, looking back to the Queen. “Is that...particularly unusual?”

Toriel’s hands fall away from her face and she pulls her phone out of her pocket and stares at it for a couple of seconds, as if contemplating calling someone. “Y-you’re not going to get reception down here,” Alphys tells her. “U-unless you’d like the wifi password?” 

She shakes her head and stows her phone back in her pocket. “I will tell them later,” she nods to Alphys. The Queen swallows once, twice, and looks back toward Undyne. “Will she recover?” Toriel asks gravely. She moves next to Undyne to see her face better in the stark medical lighting.

Alphys shrugs and plasters her face back to the eyepieces of the microscope, fiddling idly with the zoom knob. “I don’t know,” Alphys confesses. “I-it’s not something I’ve ever dealt with before, and it’s not something that comes up, l-like ever? B-but I’m doing the best I can!” Alphys pries her face off the microscope to look at Toriel instead. “And i-it will be all right!”

“I am sure it will,” Toriel responds with quiet confidence. Despite herself, Alphys blushes a light pink. “And...I could help, I believe. Asgore contracted buttercup poisoning once, did you know?” Toriel says. “I did not know healing magic at the time, but now I do, and I believe I could be of some assistance.” 

Alphys hesitates. “T-true, your Majesty, but...we don’t know how Undyne contracted it? And because of that, w-well, it’s not so easy as fixing it if it were from, um, for example and picked completely randomly, uh, a piece? Like a pie of f-food?” Alphys’s hands twitch nervously, smacking against the microscope in front of her. “I mean like a piece of food? Like i-ingestion? Because magic would work if the means of entry was mostly magical but if it were physical for example then we would need more physical means of fixing the problem like blood transfusions or vaccines in smaller doses except that would only work for monsters who haven’t contracted it yet, um I’m rambling...”

Toriel narrows her eyes in Alphys’s direction. Alphys swallows an eep and returns to scrutinizing the microscope. The zoom is way out of focus and the image is useless, but her hands are shaking too much to reliably refocus the image so she buries them under her desk and pretends to be engaged in the vague, pale-green blurs that swim around her field of vision. 

Thankfully, Toriel lets it slide. “What you are saying, then, is that magic can heal wounds if their method of infliction is magical.” 

“Partially,” Alphys responds, taking a deep breath, finally trusting her hands to refocus the image. She switches the slide from hemoglobin to a white blood cell. “You can help her Soul? But the physical matter that got hit, that’s a bit harder to help. Most of the damage was probably p-physical? Since she was fencing with, er, actual tangible swords. But helping her Soul would be useful.” 

Toriel nods decisively. Alphys is torn between working and watching her Queen, but decides on the latter. Toriel rolls up her sleeves and drags an impersonal metallic chair from one corner of the room. She sits herself on the chair with all the graceful regality of a monarch, despite the fact that the chair is much too small from her, and situates herself comfortably at Undyne’s side. Then, Toriel closes her eyes. 

Her palms, which were previously folded over her lap, extend until they are near Undyne’s side. As if in a trance, Toriel gets up and walks over to the other side of Undyne’s body. Alphys wonders if she realizes that side of Undyne took the worst damage before arriving, if Papyrus had said something. As a faint lavender glow emanates from Toriel’s hands, Alphys doubts it. 

Though Alphys stands up, cranes her neck, stands on the tips of her toes, she can’t see anything happening except the weird light. Alphys doesn’t have any magic herself, and had never set out to learn, but she supposes that this is what healing magic, Toriel-brand, looks like. She’d seen healing magic before, of course, back in school, but none quite like this. Most magic is more akin to a burning flame or whizzing lights, something high-paced and energetic. But Toriel remains quite calm throughout the entire encounter, and there are no flashes and bangs - just the Queen, solemnly mending one of her subjects.

Within several seconds, Toriel re-opens her eyes, looking supremely unaffected by the dint she’d just supposedly put in her magic supply. Alphys only realizes just how great that dint might have been when Toriel stands and immediately sits back down, hand raising to her forehead. She waves Alphys off, still not looking up - Alphys, who hadn’t even realized she’d jumped out of her seat, sits sheepishly back down. 

“I am quite all right,” Toriel tells her from behind her hand and through a clenched jaw. Alphys opens her mouth to point out the obvious logical flaws in that statement, then decides against it. 

“Um. Is there anything I can do?” 

Toriel shakes her head soundlessly, then lifts her gaze to meet Alphys’s. Alphys pretends she doesn’t notice the sweat beading on Toriel’s face, glancing instead from Toriel to Undyne. “No. I am well,” Toriel repeats, and this time Alphys keeps her mouth shut entirely. “Though I take it you would like to work.”

“O-oh!” Alphys remembers. “Y-yeah, I have, um, s-some stuff to do, though you’re welcome to s-stay for a bit. Though I c-can’t imagine why you w-would, it’s kinda dark and I’ll be b-boring.” 

“I will not keep you,” Toriel replies, hefting herself to her feet. It looks like it takes effort. She strides to the door, steps evening as she walks, then stops at the doorway. 

“Thank you,” Alphys remembers, and a wave of relief washes over her - she’d remembered to thank her before the Queen left, at least. 

“It is not a problem,” Toriel responds. “In fact...” she trails off, as if debating to say something else, then draws a breath and continues anyway, with the air of someone plunging off a cliff and hoping there are clouds below. “I had truly planned to to come to to speak with Undyne, to apologize. I said some rather untoward things in the defense of my child, and I had hoped...well. Please inform me when she wakes.” 

“I-I will!” Alphys hastens to reassure her. “And, uh, on her behalf...thanks?” 

Alphys watches Toriel smile, a bit lighter, and leave. She returns her attention, a bit overwhelmed, to her white blood cells. 

She stands corrected: that was simply the Queen, solemnly mending one of her friends.


	14. Chapter 14

Gaster waits at the exact same place he’d left Frisk, eerie and unmoving in a sea of waving flowers. Frisk skips up to him. They ask him if he’d like some tea, then realize that speaking might be rude and place the tea in their Interdimensional Box B and sign the question instead. 

Gaster looks strangely at Frisk, but shakes his head no in one crisp movement. Frisk wonders how such an aloof man could possibly be responsible for maintaining literally everyone. They’re sure he’s a softie beneath all that black hardened exterior. 

Now that Frisk’s leg is better, they bounce around Gaster, exploring their surroundings. They poke him on the shoulder. He looks at them icily. They brush it off and sprint over to the edge, curious to see what lies below. When Frisk glances back over their shoulder, Gaster has his eyes trained on the elevator and his chin raised high, heading for a different stop labelled P3 in purple lettering. 

They finally reach the edge of the flowers, and they thank their reflexes for their not-life because the flowers end _abruptly_ , and if Frisk hadn’t been looking several feet in front of their legs they might have run right off the edge. Heart pounding in their chest, they lower themself onto their knees and peer over the edge. They’re not sure if they can double-death, die again in the Void, but they don’t really want to find out. Besides, if flying were possible, why would the Void need elevators? 

This place is shaped like a disk, they note, running their hands carefully over the edges. There are plants growing horizontally that they feel brushing against their palms, flowers of all sorts and types, and even some particularly intrepid specimen growing straight down, dangling their colorful heads over the gaping chasm.

Frisk follows their line of sight down and down, and sees four circles wobbling in the Void below them, each one orbiting a center point a bit to their sides. It’s what they saw through the lens of their camera, they realize, but this time in blooming color. 

Right below them is a sort of dark blue, rocky plateau speckled with pools and lakes of water, with one giant streaming slicing straight through the center. That...platform? moves very slowly, calmly billowing its reserves of water so that each droplet skates off into the depths of the Void. The next one, right below, is a blinding white that sears through their eyes and stings at the back of their skull. Squinting in that direction reveals no additional details, and this one seems stationary, always in one place. Then, a bit below that and twisting around its imaginary center with vigor is a crater-like land, pockmarked with rocky chasms and with steam billowing a gentle red; and below that one, the final circle, moving fastest of all, is a vague blur of fluorescent pink and blue lights that whiz around in a geometric-themed blob. 

Frisk hovers for a little while over that edge, dislodging some occasional clumps of dirt and watching them spin over the edge into nothing. Despite the eerie black that carpets the world around them, the spots of color are mesmerizing. 

Finally satisfied, they head back to the elevator. Gaster waits for them several paces away, his black coat billowing against the backdrop of the garden like a beacon of darkness. 

This time he clicks D1 on his control panel. The doors open. They step inside. _I am taking you to see my fellow undead_ , clack his hands. _However, due to the shiftings of the Core below us, we must take a detour through Waterfall._

Frisk tugs on his sleeve, and their hands come away kind of sticky. Gross. _What do the letters mean?_ they sign. 

Gasters looks imposingly down on them, but they make their best puppy-eyes, the ones that Sans can never resist, and he huffs out air silently and responds _They are the colors of each of our locations. I calibrated the elevators according to the palettes of each of the levels of the Void._

He turns to face front, but Frisk is still confused. _What do you mean levels?_

_There are five levels, or primary locations, to which the occupants of the Void may live or visit. They resemble the locations of the Underground in which my friends are most comfortable._

Oh, so New Home had been purple-ish, so P for purple. Frisk giggles. What a strange way to code elevators! 

The elevator dings, and Napstablook’s music stops, and Gaster and Frisk step out onto a plateau at Waterfall. 

This time, at least, Gaster waits for Frisk to look around before setting off. Almost instantly, they recognize this place as the level directly below them, ringed with waterfalls and clumps of mushrooms that sparkle like stars. Around them, craggy rocks dot the great plateau, which is surrounded in a ring by towering mountains. Water trickles down on every side and patters to the ground in an almost rhythmic pattern that makes Frisk think of the wind chimes outside the laboratory back in the Overworld. The path that leads away from the elevator is lit by luminescent tufts of grass and mushrooms, powered by shining bluish lanterns. In the distance, Frisk sees Monster Kid running excitedly along some rocks, and they want to go say hello until they see his head and realize that a few of the spikes look like they’ve been sawed off. 

Seeing that Frisk has at least acquainted themself with their surroundings, Gaster sets off along the path. Frisk looks back and the elevator is gone, so they hurry to keep up with Gaster’s long strides. 

_Where are we going?_ Frisk signs. Gaster does not respond. Frisk asks out loud, trying not to trip over the rocks. 

Gaster huffs out a breath and points in the distance. _W3_. he signs so quickly Frisk nearly misses it and stumbles over an errant stone. 

“Where’s that?”

 _The second level_. Ah, the white-looking one. 

A little ways down the path, two figures stand, deep in conversation. As Gaster and Frisk approach, they see that the two figures are Alphys and Undyne, and both stand tall and proud. They turn as Gaster approaches, and mutter quiet hellos. 

Then Alphys notices Frisk. Instantly, her demeanor changes from subdued to furious. She hisses at them, literally hisses, fangs bared and everything. “You!”

Her eyes are icy and full of hatred, despite their eerie blankness, and Frisk recoils. They’ve never seen Alphys this mad. She’s wearing Asgore’s robe, Frisk notices abruptly. 

At her side, Undyne turns, and her face becomes frosty cold. Frisk tries a wave, but Alphys’s face curls up in contempt. “I can’t believe you came here,” Alphys spits. There is zero hesitation in her voice, only a blood-curdling malice. Frisk stares at her in shock. What made Alphys this angry? “Why did you come here?” 

“To take a shortcut?” they answer meekly.

“Then leave,” Undyne commands, but Alphys shakes her head. 

“No, they will not leave,” Alphys spits, drawing herself tall over them. “You have much to answer for.” 

She sucks in a deep breath. “Ruling the Underground is no easy proposition, human. Do you know why I ruled? Because you killed all of my friends. I am sure you remember. Do you have no decency, and no empathy? Do you even realize all of the misery you caused when you rampaged through the Underground, destroying everything in your path?

“My books told me that human Souls require no empathy to survive,” Alphys spits. “I understand now that they were right. I demand an answer - why did you destroy everything?” 

Frisk takes a step backward, and then another, terrified for their life. They have little doubt that if they were still alive, Alphys would strike them dead. Even now, her claws twitch for her side, where there’s a small dagger tucked in her pocket. “That w-wasn’t me,” Frisk protests. To be honest, the sheer vile rage in Alphys’s voice scares them. She’s terrifying, her frame illuminated by the electric blue of this Waterfall, blank eyes flashing with echoes of timelines Frisk cannot remember and cannot forget. 

“Do not try to deceive me, human!” Alphys takes a step forward. Frisk stumbles backward and almost trips over a lantern. Undyne grabs Alphys’s shoulder. 

“I’m...I’m not C-chara, Alphys,” Frisk says, and they can feel tears again. They take a deep, stubborn breath and sniff them back into their tear ducts.

“You’re lying!” Alphys says, and her face kind of switches between angry and sad really fast. Beside her, Undyne glares at Frisk with venom enough to down a mammoth. 

“No, I’m not!” Frisk yells back, frustration boiling out of their voice box. Instantly, they regret their reaction, watching Alphys’s face light up in vengeful triumph at their emotional outburst. Why won’t she listen?

“Why else would you come here but to laugh at our misery?” Alphys asks, and Frisk wants to throw their hands in the air and cry at the same time. “When you cut down U-undyne, and Papyrus, and Asgore, and everyone I loved...I will show you the misery you inflicted, human, so that you may understand. I wish you had empathy only so that I could tear the feelings from your Soul. You cannot understand how that felt! To watch everything that I loved turn to dust while y-you laughed!” Alphys’s eyes brim over with tears, but her words are an acid that tears at Frisk’s heart. Several monsters peep over ledges to watch, and Frisk really wishes they would go away. “And then I ruled the Underground as it grew darker and darker with misery and despair, and I was h-hopeless once again! And at the root of it all like p-poison was y-you, human!”

Alphys sucks in several deep, shuddering gasps, and forcefully stills her quivering breaths. “I should have killed you when I had the chance,” she says, and her rage, suddenly depleted, leaves her standing stock-still. “I would have saved so many lives. I know, now, to act when I can. So thank you, human, for teaching me that one lesson. It is the only good you have ever done.” 

Alphys stares at Frisk, hateful, then turns sharply and stands next to the river. Undyne remains in front of Frisk, watching them silently. 

Frisk has no idea what to do. They’d only just started to believe Toriel but now they can’t push Alphys out of their mind, can’t erase her agonized accusations, however much they want to. They feel empty. If only they’d fought harder. If only they’d been a little stronger.

They won’t let themself cry.

Undyne looks at them, curious. “Why don’t you fight back, human?” 

And just like that, all that frustration and sadness comes rushing back to the surface, breaking the tenuous peace Frisk had made with themself. Suddenly, Frisk just really, really wants to curl up in a ball and give up, and never come out, but they _promised_ themself they’d make friends. So they scrub their tiny hands across their face and say “I don’t want to fight back,” quietly. “I’m not...I’m not the person Alphys thinks I am.” They wrap their arms around themself, shivering a bit. 

“You’re lying,” Undyne says, and it’s the calmest accusation she’s ever made. 

“I’m not! My name’s Frisk, and I never wanted to hurt anyone. There was someone else, and they were the ones that made me...made me kill people even though I didn’t want to.” 

Undyne snorts. “I do not forget what I see. I witnessed you bring destruction to all of my friends - and, apparently, you did so hundreds of times.” 

“No, I’m serious!” Frisk pleads. “When I fell into the Ruins, another Soul kind of messed with my head, and they wanted to kill everyone, because they weren’t very nice.” 

“Why should I believe you?” she cocks her head toward Frisk, like a jaguar studying an antelope before rushing onto the attack. 

Undyne’s words stab into Frisk like spears. They push away a desperate wish to get rid of their emotions. It might be nice to not have to _feel_ all the time.

“I’m not lying,” they maintain.

“Convince me.”

Frisk looks at her for a moment, feeling their stomach trying to pull itself apart. Then they take out their cell phone.

Undyne’s eyes narrow, and without saying a word a spear manifests in her hands. 

“I’m not gonna hurt you,” Frisk promises. From the second Box, Frisk pulls out the Sea Tea. In a tired, quiet voice, they say, “I know you wanted to go surfing when you got to the ocean. And I know Alphys likes tea. I can’t really make up what happened to you with this, but...take it?”

Undyne studies Frisk for a couple of moments. Frisk isn’t sure what to do with their face. They fight the urge to just...close their eyes against everything. Even the spearpoint hovering menacingly over Undyne’s shoulder doesn’t scare them, not right now.

Undyne keeps staring. Then, with a slow flick of her wrist, the spear dissipates. Frisk is too numb for relief. 

She takes the tea with both hands. “Alphys taught me to think before I act. It took a long time for me to change. To stop and study people.” 

She sniffs the tea experimentally. Her eyebrows arch for a moment. She stares Frisk dead in the eyes and says, “In every timeline in which you beat me, you used the Sea Tea.” 

She looks almost like she wants to say something else, but she doesn’t. She turns, abruptly, and walks toward where Alphys stands. 

Frisk turns, feeling drained and tired, and shuffles back toward where Gaster stands, tall and imposing. Wordlessly, he leads them into the elevator, which reappears in front of him without any sort of call button. 

Frisk stands in front of the elevator, a couple of steps behind Gaster, then walks up beside him and asks “Why did you tell everyone I was Chara?” 

Gaster looks at them with contempt. _Because you are._

“I’m not!” Frisk says, and angry tears spill over their face, hot and cathartic, even though they don’t deserve to cry. “I’m not, I’m Frisk!” 

_You are a Soul in a body shared between Frisk and Chara._

“But I’m...I’m Frisk’s Soul, not Chara’s.”

_I cannot trust that. You could be acting. The fact is that you are a Soul stained with murder inhabiting the body of a murderer, and I cannot take chances._

Frisk is entirely at a loss for anything to say. Indignation and shame wash over them and they turn from Gaster, trying their best to muffle their erratic breathing in the elbow of their sweater. He doesn’t appear to hear them crying - or if he does, he remains entirely unaffected.

Before the elevator can move again, the doors ding open. Gaster twitches in surprise. Frisk wipes the tears away on their sleeve, embarrassed. 

Gerson the turtle settles next to them. Frisk hunches away from him, expecting him to say something.

And say something he does. “Heyo, kid. How’s the Void treatin’ you?” 

The elevator starts. A cheerful rendition of Mettaton’s theme blasts throughout the room.

“Not great,” they mutter despondently, then instantly feel bad for dumping their problems on him. “Sorry.”

Gerson pretends he missed their apology. “Wa ha ha! Didn’t figure you were havin’ a great time,” he laughs. “‘Cause this skelly over here went and figured you were Chara! Thinks too much with his head, that one.” 

Gaster turns his head fractionally but does not comment. 

“I’m not them,” Frisk whispers. They shouldn’t be talking, they shouldn’t be begging, but they need someone to believe them. “I’m not, I can’t...” 

“I know,” says the turtle, and pats their head with an old weathered claw. They start. His voice is kind. “Knew it when you first got off the elevator! You don’t walk like that freak-o, Frisk! Only takes a bit of unclouded brains to realize, and I got plenty of those up in this old skull of mine, ha ha!” 

“You believe me?” they ask, and for the first time they make eye contact, their hope letting them ignore the red rimming their eyelids.

“‘Course I do, Frisk.” 

His words fill Frisk with a long-lost sense of determination, like a rusty parched engine receiving gas for the first time in years. A relieved, hopeful smile spreads over their face. “Thank you, Mr. Gerson,” they say, smiling hesitantly, and the old turtle ruffles their hair with his eyeglass. 

“Don’t mention it. Now this skeleton over here, he’s gotta open his mind a bit! Gets stuck too much in the past!”

To Frisk’s surprise, Gerson almost looks mad. His mouth smiles but his eyes narrow at Gaster, who was watching the exchange silently. “Whaddya got to say for yourself, Gaster?” 

Gaster tilts his head slowly. _About what?_ ask the hands. 

“‘bout the kiddo! Look at ‘em, old man. Do they look like a killer to you?” 

Gaster nods. _They have certainly killed before._

Gerson narrows his eyes at him. “You’re lying, you are. You’ve seen the timelines, you stubborn fool, you know what Chara does! This kid ain’t Chara, sure as bones is bones!” 

_I know the facts._

“You know what you think are the facts,” Gerson retorts sharply. “You watch this kiddo, see if yer still convinced you know.”

_I do not need to. All that I will do is have them atone for their sins._

The elevator dings for W3. Gerson huffs. “Stubborn fool,” he mutters acidly. “‘f you can tell yerself this kiddo don’t remind you of your own...well, I dunno the thoughts that go through an old skelly’s head. But I thought better of you, old man. I really did. Don’t you go provin’ me wrong. You think this is justice?” He barks a laugh. “You wouldn’t know justice from a pine tree with those thoughts of vengeance up there in your head.”

Gaster looks a bit like someone’s replaced his tea with acid. Gerson ignores him and turns to Frisk instead. “Dunno if you know yet, but yer doin’ a world of good just bein’ here, even though it probably sucks for you. So don’t let ‘im get to you, kid. Just keep bein’ you.”

Gerson pats one of Frisk’s hands, and glares at Gaster’s back as he swirls out of the elevator. “Bye, Frisk!” he hollers. Frisk turns back and waves. They feel hope bubbling in their chest, and they grin. 

Gaster strides off the elevator, walking even faster than normal, and Frisk jogs to keep up. When they look back at the elevator, it’s heading straight back up toward Snowdin.


End file.
